SGUTranscripts - User contributions [en]

SGU Episode 152

2013-01-06T16:46:55Z

Cornelioid: /* Name that Logical Fallacy (58:58) */ corrections, removed template

SGU Episode 152

2013-01-06T16:32:48Z

Cornelioid: /* Name that Logical Fallacy () */ full segment draft

SGU Episode 152

2013-01-06T16:15:06Z

Cornelioid: /* Name that Logical Fallacy () */ wrong template

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{{InfoBox
|episodeTitle = SGU Episode 152
|episodeDate = 11th June 2008
|episodeIcon = File:crystalskull.jpg
|rebecca = y 
|bob = y 
|jay = y 
|evan = y 
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|downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2008-06-11.mp3
|notesLink = http://www.theskepticsguide.org/archive/podcastinfo.aspx?mid=1&pid=152
|forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,11507.0.html
|qowText = Skeptical scrutiny is the means in both Science and Religion by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.
|qowAuthor = [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan Carl Sagan]
|}}

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

== This Day in Skepticism () ==

== News Items ==
=== Nuclear Baby ()===
The House of Yahweh predicts the Nuclear Baby will come on June 12th, 2008 although previous predictiions on Sept. 12th, 2006 and June 12th, 2007 appear to have not come true.

=== Bacteria Evolve ()===

=== The 100MPG Car ()===

=== Unicorn Deer ()===

=== Fishing Monkeys ()===

=== Plutoids ()===

=== Albinos in Africa ()===

== Special Report: Crystal Skulls ()==

== Questions and Emails () ==
=== Coincidence ()===

=== Green Nanoparticles ()===

== Name that Logical Fallacy () ==
Mike Lacelle asks if "poisoning the well" is a logical fallacy?

{{transcribing
|transcriber = Cornelioid
}}

== Science or Fiction () ==

== Skeptical Quote of the Week () ==
<blockquote>Skeptical scrutiny is the means in both Science and Religion by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.</blockquote>
Dr. Carl Sagan

== Announcements () ==

{{Outro119}}

== References ==
<references/>

{{Navigation}}

SGU Episode 152

2013-01-06T16:14:32Z

Cornelioid: /* Name that Logical Fallacy () */ transcribing template

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{{InfoBox
|episodeTitle = SGU Episode 152
|episodeDate = 11th June 2008
|episodeIcon = File:crystalskull.jpg
|rebecca = y 
|bob = y 
|jay = y 
|evan = y 
|guest1 =
|downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2008-06-11.mp3
|notesLink = http://www.theskepticsguide.org/archive/podcastinfo.aspx?mid=1&pid=152
|forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,11507.0.html
|qowText = Skeptical scrutiny is the means in both Science and Religion by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.
|qowAuthor = [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan Carl Sagan]
|}}

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

== This Day in Skepticism () ==

== News Items ==
=== Nuclear Baby ()===
The House of Yahweh predicts the Nuclear Baby will come on June 12th, 2008 although previous predictiions on Sept. 12th, 2006 and June 12th, 2007 appear to have not come true.

=== Bacteria Evolve ()===

=== The 100MPG Car ()===

=== Unicorn Deer ()===

=== Fishing Monkeys ()===

=== Plutoids ()===

=== Albinos in Africa ()===

== Special Report: Crystal Skulls ()==

== Questions and Emails () ==
=== Coincidence ()===

=== Green Nanoparticles ()===

== Name that Logical Fallacy () ==
Mike Lacelle asks if "poisoning the well" is a logical fallacy?

{{transcribing all
|transcriber = Cornelioid
}}

== Science or Fiction () ==

== Skeptical Quote of the Week () ==
<blockquote>Skeptical scrutiny is the means in both Science and Religion by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.</blockquote>
Dr. Carl Sagan

== Announcements () ==

{{Outro119}}

== References ==
<references/>

{{Navigation}}

SGU Episode 383

2012-11-23T19:52:01Z

Cornelioid: /* Bicycle Physics (40:13) */ complete segment

SGU Episode 383

2012-11-23T19:27:56Z

Cornelioid: /* Bicycle Physics (40:13) */ segment up to 43:03

SGU Episode 383

2012-11-20T19:43:29Z

Cornelioid: /* Math Hurts () */ full segment

SGU Episode 383

2012-11-20T19:24:03Z

Cornelioid: /* Denver UFO (0:03:03) */ full segment

SGU Episode 383

2012-11-19T20:18:29Z

Cornelioid: /* Denver UFO (0:03:03) */

SGU Episode 383

2012-11-19T03:24:55Z

Cornelioid: /* This Day in Skepticism (0:0:29) */ capitalized i's

SGU Episode 383

2012-11-19T03:24:01Z

Cornelioid: /* Denver UFO () */ transcribing template

SGU Episode 383

2012-11-19T03:20:40Z

Cornelioid: /* This Day in Skepticism () */ full segment

SGU Episode 383

2012-11-19T03:09:38Z

Cornelioid: /* Introduction */ full segment

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-17T14:24:22Z

Cornelioid: /* Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:08:11) */ capitalized "i"

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{{InfoBox
|episodeTitle = SGU Episode 381
|episodeDate = 3rd November 2012 
|episodeIcon = File:KurtzPic2.jpg 
|previous = 
|next = 
|rebecca = y 
|bob = y 
|jay = y 
|evan = y 
|guest1 = RW: Richard Wiseman
|guest2 = 
|guest3 = 
|downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2012-11-03.mp3
|notesLink = http://www.theskepticsguide.org/archive/podcastinfo.aspx?mid=1&pid=381
|forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,43845.0.html
|qowText = Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality. 
|qowAuthor = [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] 
|}}

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

RW: – a live edition of my favorite podcast and radio show. So, we're going to have Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Jay Novella, Even Bernstein, and – and a woman –

(''laughter'')

RW: – join us. It's the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe!

(''applause'')

S: Hello, and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

(''applause'')

S: Today is Thursday, October 25th, 2012, and we are live from [http://www.csiconference.org/ CSICon 2012].

(''applause'')

Joining me, as always, are Bob Novella –

B: Hey everybody!

(''cheers'')

S: – Rebecca Watson –

R: Hello, everyone!

(''cheers'')

''audience member'': I love you, Rebecca!

R: I love you, too!

S: – Jay Novella...Jay Novella –

J: Wooooo! Rebecca, yeah!

(''cheers'')

R: I love you, Jay!

S: – and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hello, Nashville!

(''cheers'')

S: So, how're you guys doing? How do you like Nashville?

J: It's awesome. I didn't – I thought people were going to literally be playing guitar when I got off the airplane.

B: Oh, come on, Jay.

S: Yeah, in the airport, you know?

J: Yeah.

== This Day in Skepticism (1:28) ==
November 3, 1957 Sputnik 2 launched

S: So, Rebecca, you always start us off with a This Day in Science and Skepticism. This show will be going up on November 3rd, so, did anything happen that day?

R: Nope.

(''laughter'')

B: Ever?

R: Oh, all right. One thing happened. One thing happened! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_2 Sputnik 2] happened.

S: ''Sputnik 2: The Revenge''.

(''laughter'')

R: ''Son of Sputnik''.

S: ''Son of Sputnik''.

J: ''Son of Sputnik''!

R: That's right. Sputnik 2 you might know as "the one that killed the puppy".

(''awwws'')

R: No? Aww, that's weird, 'cause I really thought that this would go over well at a live event! Yeah, Sputnik 2 is the craft that took Laika into orbit, Laika being the Soviet space dog who became the first animal in orbit—for about, like, 10 minutes, before she died.

E: Well, you know –

S: A couple of hours. It was a couple of hours. They thought he was going to survive for about ten days –

R: I think she's a "she".

S: – ''she'' was going to survive –

E: Eh.

R: Get it right, Steve!

S: You know, asexual Russian names, I mean, come on. But, they thought that Laika was going to survive for about ten days, but then they had a little mishap with the cooling system, and –

E: Oops.

S: Yeah. – got a little hot in the capsule—104 degrees, they said in (''inaudible'')

E: That'd be a hot dog. Yep.

(''groans'')

B: Oh, come on. My god.

E: Thank you. I'll be here all the weekend.

R: How – can we just take a moment, just to take a poll of the audience: How are our dead dog jokes doing? Good?

J: Yes!

(''applause'')

R: OK. All right. Yeah.

J: You know what? I didn't know until we researched this item that it was a one-way mission.

R: Yeah.

E: Mm-hmm.

J: That's really nasty.

S: Well, the capsule returned.

(''laughter'')

E: Yeah, well –

S: About 162 days later, it burned up in the atmosphere. But, yeah, they never intended to bring Laika back.

J: No, they actually were going to euthanize her with poison food after the tenth day, I think, right?

R: This is seriously the worst item ever. What was I thinking when I picked it?

S: There – there's Laika.

E: Aww. Aww.

R: Oh yeah! I didn't pick it! Steve forced me to!

E: But, we'd never know who this dog was if it didn't go on Sputnik 2, right? I mean, this would be an otherwise – another animal.

R: No, yeah, and I'm sure Laika appreciates the fame she gets from ''beyond the grave''.

E: She got her fifteen minutes.

== In Memorium ==
=== Paul Kurtz (3:45) ===
* 1925-2012

S: Well, we are going to start the new segment of the show with an ''in memoriam''. We do like to, on the ''Skeptic's Guide'', pause to remember those members of the skeptical community who have passed, and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] died several days ago, just the day before the organizers were coming down to the conference. He died on Sunday. He was 85 years old. It was 1925 to 2012, so that is 86. I can do math. (''audience laughter'') You'll know why i was confused in a moment.

R: 'Cause you're terrible at math?

S: Yes. So, before we get the show started, Ron Lindsay and Kendrick Frazier talked about Paul Kurtz. You know, he was one of the giants of the skeptical movement, of the skeptical community. You know, he was largely responsible for organizing the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, founding Prometheus Books, CFI, [http://www.secularhumanism.org/ Secular Humanism]. He was an academic, a philosopher. He really gave a lot of weight to the movement early on. He made it to that – he broke it to that next level. It wasn't that, you know, before he came on board. So he has to be remembered for that. We did have some interactions with Paul along the years. The first year that we started – (''audience cooing'')

R: Baby Steve!

E: Aww.

S: I was a little younger back then.

R: He's three years old there.

B: He's only half-grey there.

S: (''laughing'') I'm only half-grey!

E: A little less grey, yep.

S: You can mark my age by my greyness up until about ten years ago, when i went totally grey. Right when we got started, in 1996, you know, CSICOP, now CSI, you know, they were the big national skeptical organization. They'd definitely – They took us under their wing, you know, gave us their support, their local membership list, so that we could get our movement going. And i remember meeting Paul at the first World Skeptics Conference, and he was immediately—like, you know, your grandfather—like, you know, very, very comfortably took on that air of being a mentor. It's like, "Yeah, this is great. You're welcome to the skeptical movement." So i definitely remember him fondly in that way. A few years later, Paul organized a meeting of the local skeptical groups. In the picture here you can see me again with Bob, Perry, and Evan. The four of us came up together –

J: Now, if i remember correctly, Rebecca, you and i were off being badass somewhere else, right?

R: I think that's what was happening, yeah.

S: – and, i think, in the foreground, that's Colonel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Nickell Joe Nickell], isn't it?

E: Colonel.

S: Yeah, he had broke his leg in Spain, or something?

R: Round of applause for Colonel Joe Nickell!

E: I remember that.

(''applause'')

S: Joe actually is going to come up, and he's going to read a poem that he wrote, i believe, about Paul.

JN: Paul was a great supporter of the arts, and i hope he would have liked this. The poem is called "Book of Seasons: An elegy". (''Uncertain re: permission to reproduce poem'')

S: Thank you, Joe.

=== Leon Jaroff (7:34) ===
* 1926-2012

S: This same weekend, Saturday before the show, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_(magazine) Leon Jaroff] also died. ''He'' was 85, hence my confusion. So, Leon Jariff—not a big name in the skeptical community recently, and if you ask, you know, people at conventions like this if they knew who he was – I mean, in fact, right before the show Rebecca said to me, "Who's Leon Jaroff?"

R: (''indignant gasp'')

S: Sorry, Rebecca.

(''audience laughter'')

S: But he was perhaps one of the most skeptical journalists that we have had.

B: Yeah.

S: He was the science columnist for ''Time Magazine''. It was he who said, "You know, popularizing science is important, you know, we should start a science-dedicated magazine." And that was ''Discover Magazine''. That was him. He was not afraid to be a hard-nosed skeptic when writing about scientific issues. So, for example, when writing about chiropractors, [http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,213482,00.html he wrote],

<blockquote>
Chiropractors also employ a bewildering variety of weird practices to diagnose their patients. Some use applied kinesiology, a muscle test that supposedly can diagnose allergies and diseased organs. Hair analysis and iris readings are commonplace in the profession. Even sillier are many of the treatments that chiropractors use and recommend: homeopathic potions, colon irrigation, magnetic therapy, enzyme pills, colored-light therapy, and something called "balancing body energy," among other mystical procedures with undocumented effects.
</blockquote>

S: That's from a mainstream journalist writing in ''Time Magazine''. Do we see this kind of thing today? I don't think so.

B: Nope.

(''audience applause'')

S: So, you know, we do have to, I think, also note the support that Jaroff gave to such a good science journalism, and that kind of hard-nosed, skeptical science journalism is definitely something we miss. That's a void that, I think, that we in the skeptical community have to fill, but, unfortunately, it is a void.

== News Items ==
=== Big Bang Conference at CERN (9:31)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19870036 Big Bang and religion mixed in Cern debate]

S: Rebecca –

R: Yes!

S: – this is a different quote. It's not as good a quote.

<blockquote>
Science in isolation is great for producing stuff, but not so good for producing ideas.
</blockquote>

R: Mm-hmm.

S: Who said that?

R: That was said by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Pinsent Andrew Pinsent] at the Ramsey Center for Science and Religion. What I particularly liked about this quote is that it is completely reversed – it is the exact opposite of what I would have suggested.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I would say that science is actually really good at ideas, but, in order to produce stuff, you have to add something else. You know, like, they might be able to figure out lasers, but to make a CD player you need a marketing executive.

S: Or death ray.

R: Thank you. Yeah, of course. Why didn't I go there first?

(''laughter'')

R: Yeah, so, this quote comes from a recent article that the BBC produced: "Big Bang and religion mixed in CERN debates". Apparently, there was a conference recently that CERN held—you remember CERN, you know, the guys who, apparently, may have found –

J: Higgs!

R: – the Higgs boson.

S: A boson with Higgs-like properties.

R: A Higgs-like thing.

S: Boson, yeah.

R: A Higgish. I like "Higgish" –

B: "Higgish"?

R: – a little bit.

J: (''laughing'') "A little bit!"

S: "Higgy"?

B: (''singing, inaudible'') ''Higgy again."

R: So, yes. Apparently, I don't know the purpose – I don't know what, who dreamt this up, but what I'm thinking is that someone was concerned that they may have found a particle that many people know as the "God particle", and, so, they're concerned that they're going to be excommunicated or, you know, that people will rebel—religious people will rebel—against science. Basically, we'll have some sort of Dark Ages–esque thing happening, and, so, maybe somebody at CERN thought, "Well, we should have this conference where we talk about how religious people should be OK with the Higgs boson."

B: Mm-hmm.

R: So, those are the good intentions that I'm assuming are behind this conference that has speakers such as this. The quotes in here are pretty fun, and none of them have any amount of intelligence to them. Steve, you're the one who brought this one to my attention here –

S: Yes.

R: I'm interested in what – we've talked a little bit before about things like the Templeton Foundation, which is an organization that gives out a prize – gives out prizes to people who can explore science in a religious context, basically. And I'm a bit opposed to it. I feel like it's muddying the waters. I think we don't ''need'' to bring religion into what people are doing at CERN.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I think those two things are happily separated, but I'm interested in knowing your feelings on this.

S: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think trying to introduce theology into science is misguided. You know, this conference was specifically about the origin of the universe. So, it's not just about scientific issues in particular. I think the thinking, at least on the part of the theologians who were quoted about this conference, is that, well, you're talking about the origin of the universe. That's a really big question, and religion is about answering the really big questions—not science. Science is narrow and reductionist, and makes stuff, but can't really grapple with the big questions of our origins. And that's exactly incorrect, as you were saying. That's a complete knock to science. I mean, science is, in fact, the only human intellectual endeavor that ''can'' answer any empirical question about the origin of the universe.

R: Yeah.

J: So, was the conference, though, the scientists trying to appease religious people? The saying that –

R: Well, you know, apparently, this was – the conference was done on the part of CERN, according to BBC, and that's what I find troubling. I'm totally OK with a conference that religious people host, you know, and the topic might be "How do we –" you know, "How do we consider our theology now that we know ''X'', ''Y'', and ''Z''—now that science has discovered this? What does that mean for ''our'' belief system?" And I think that's fine, but, you know, apparently, the theologians who were there seem to think that this was a chance to ''debate'' the scientists –

J: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

R: – and, no! Why would you do that? Debate is completely the opposite direction of where you want to go.

S: It also – I mean, the quotes seem to me like a desperate grasp at relevance, trying to make it seem like they're – you know, that theology is still relevant to questions about origins of the universe, when, in fact, science has completely displaced it from that endeavor.

J: So, did it end up with, like, a fistfight? Like, what happened?

(''laughter'')

E: Science won.

R: I haven't found any evidence of any arrests, so, apparently –

S: There were no fisticuffs?

J: That really must've been awkward as hell, though, right? Like, they're like, sitting there, like, after a whole day, and they're like, "Uh, OK, it's over now."

E: Something tells me they're not going to be doing this again. They're going to learn from this.

S: I don't know.

R: Well, I mean, it's actually not even – like, I wish it had been that exciting. But, instead, it just seems like it was really ''boring'' –

E: Yeah.

R: – and nobody came to ''any'' conclusions. Because you ''can't'', you know?

S: Yeah.

R: You're just having a discussion of, like, well, you know, "But what don't we know?"

=== Italian Earthquake Scientists Convicted (14:57)===
* [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/22/us-italy-earthquake-court-idUSBRE89L13V20121022 Italian scientists convicted over earthquake warning]

S: Now, we're trying to keep – we like to keep our live shows really light –

(''laughter'')

E: So far, so good.

S: So, we thought we'd talk about a horrible earthquake that killed over three hundred people.

E: Yeah, let's go there.

R: Good intro. Good intro there.

S: But there's actually a better story embedded in that. There were six Italian scientists, who were recently convicted of manslaughter –

B: Yeah.

S: – for failure to properly communicate the warnings about the upcoming L'Aquila earthquake in 2009. Yeah, we've been following this story, you know, since it happened. The quick version is that there were a number of small tremors in this very earthquake-prone part of Italy, and the geologists—the local geologists—you know, were following it. And their opinion was that, well, these tremors are very common. Most such tremors are not followed by major quakes. Most major quakes are not preceded by these kinds of tremors. So, the probability of a major quake occurring is not particularly higher, you know, now, just because of these tremors, than at any time, and, therefore, there's no cause for alarm. Now, they were specifically asked during a press conference, "Should we panic?" You know, "Should we evacuate?" And they said "No. There's no reason to evacuate. Stay at home and drink a glass of wine."

B: Steve, was this about a year ago that we covered this?

S: 2009. 2009 –

B: Oh, wow. (''inaudible'')

S: – so, was the quake, and then the court trial started about a year ago, and now the decision came down that the six scientists were convicted to six years – I think six years in prison and something like, you know, millions of dollars in damages for manslaughter—for the deaths of the people who didn't evacuate because they – of their reassurances that there was nothing to be worried about.

R: That's horrific.

J: Well, i, you know, to play devil's advocate real quick, if there was true negligence—like, if they didn't follow through with things that they needed to do, if they did a terrible job at analyzing the data, in a fashion that – where the data could have been analyzed better, or they actually weren't asking their peers for the information—i can understand if there was extreme negligence.

S: Right.

J: But, even still, like, that's very hard to prove, and I just don't understand –

S: Well, I mean, not really. The question is, was their opinion within the standard for their profession? That's—in my opinion—that's the only real question here. You can't be blamed for being wrong, right? You can't be blamed for a bad outcome if you were following the standard. Now, of course, scientists can't predict earthquakes. You can't predict when an earthquake is going to occur. That's the bottom line. What – every statement they said was truthful, you know, every factual statement. "These tremors do not necessarily mean that there's an earthquake coming, and they are not a reason to evacuate. We don't evacuate every city where there's tremors because there might be a major quake, because it's not that predictive." So, that was not negligent. No, and they weren't really being accused of negligence. They were basically being accused of poorly communicating to the public. It seems to be based on a lot of false premises about what scientists ''can know''—what an expert about, you know, an earthquake, a geologist, expert ''can know''.

R: Yeah, they've been convicted for not using a magical power they don't have.

S: Yeah.

R: They might as well have convicted all the psychics in Italy for not accurately predicting this earthquake.

J: I think we need to be careful—i don't disagree, of course. I don't think that these men should be going to jail for this at all—but it is an important thing to state that, I think, people should go to prison, or get in trouble ''legally'', if they are misrepresenting science or – right? So you see where I'm going with this.

S: Well, yeah. If you are –

J: If you're setting that premise—you're saying, "Hey, these guys screwed up, they didn't do what they were supposed to do, they didn't communicate to us the real possible outcomes here", whatever—and, like –

S: Yeah.

J: – I'll reiterate, I don't think that they should be going to jail—

B: Well, I don't agree –

J: —but, I do think, though, that that standard that that court set needs to be applied all the way down the ladder.

B: Yeah, but, Jay, like, someone saying that "I have a cure for cancer and it's scientifically proven" but it's a sham?

J: Exactly, right? So, if they're going to actually take those scientists out and say "You're done. You're not performing science anymore and you're going to jail for that bad decision or information you gave", well, hello! Then, you know, all of a sudden, a million lawsuits need to be filed.

S: But, it wasn't – to clarify, though, it wasn't ''bad'', it was just ''unlucky''. I mean, doctors encounter this all the time, you know. You are asked to decide, you know, what tests to order, what diagnoses a patient might have. There's a whole lot of liability involved with that. You can't be convicted of malpractice just because of a bad outcome if what you did was within the standard of care.

B: Right.

S: So, was the information they were giving to the public within the standard for the profession? If the answer is "yes", the fact that there was a low-probability earthquake the next week is not their fault.

E: Right.

S: It doesn't change the fact – you know, if they're saying there's a 99% chance that there's not going to be an earthquake, and then the 1% thing happens, they were still right –

J: Yeah.

S: – in saying that it was unlikely.

R: Yeah.

E: Didn't the evidence show, basically, that they performed correctly, essentially? They did not –

S: That's the consensus. I mean, so, there's worldwide outrage, especially among the scientific community (''inaudible'') –

B: This has got to be shot down in a higher court.

S: Yeah.

B: This can't – can't possibly stand.

E: I hope so.

S: Well, there's two appeals left. There's two appeals, and they will stay out of prison before those appeals. So, the United States National Academy of Science, the Royal Academy of Science—the Royal Society, rather—issued a joint statement saying that "that is why we must protest the verdict in Italy. If it becomes a precedent in law, it could lead to a situation in which scientists will be afraid to give expert opinion."

J: Yeah, that's devastating.

E: Mm-hmm.

S: So, it would have a chilling effect. What – you know, what geologist is going to, you know, talk to the public in Italy now, if you could wind up in jail and, you know, financially devastated, and your career devastated, because you can't predict the future, you know, because you don't have a crystal ball? It's insane. It's insane.

J: Yeah. To think that they're going after these scientists, and they're not going after the rampant quackery throughout –

S: Well, there's that, too.

E: I wonder how much pressure they came under from, like, the families, the survivors, of this terrible, terrible devastation –

J: Oh yeah, they had to hang someone.

E: – and I imagine they put a lot of pressure on politicians and other people in order to hold ''somebody'' accountable.

J: They have to. They had to send someone down the river for that.

B: Did they have a trial?

S: Yeah.

B: Did they have witnesses and experts coming in?

S: Yeah. Yep.

B: I'd love to know the details of what exactly happened, because how could –

(''laughter'')

S: So, we'll see if the worldwide backlash has an effect. I mean, again, they do have two appeals left, so we'll definitely follow it.

=== Whale Makes Human Sounds (21:35)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20026938 Beluga whale 'makes human-like sounds']

S: All right, Rebecca, so, we have a cute animal –

R: Thank you.

S: – we're going to talk about now.

J: This is a happy one!

R: Just tell me this narwhal or whatever is alive.

S: It's a whale.

E: It's alive and well.

S: It's a beluga whale.

B: It sort of looks like a narwhal.

R: Tell me this beluga is alive!

E: That's NOC the beluga. They're very much alive.

R: It's not a beluga?

E: "NOC". N-O-C.

S: "NOC". NOC the beluga.

R: Oh! "That's NOC."

(''laughter'')

R: I was about to say, "No, ''that is a beluga''."

S: Sounds like a children's song.

E: It does sound like a children's –

S: Evan, sing it.

E: No.

S: OK.

J: Don't change it! Please don't –

E: If my daughter was here, maybe. But, no. So, what's important about NOC the beluga? Well, OK, so, picture this: You are part of the National Marine Mammal Foundation, OK, and you're in the tank, swimming around with the whales and stuff, and, all of a sudden, you hear somebody—you hear a voice—call your name. Something to the effect that – "Get out of the water! Get out of the water!" So, you're in the tank and you come up and you say, "OK, who told me to get out of the water? Who told me to get out of the water?" And the other scientists and people are looking around you like, "Nobody? What the heck are you talking about?" And, he's like, "Well, I definitely ''heard'' that!" Well, what did he actually hear? Well, apparently, NOC the beluga made some noises very reminiscent of human noises. Beluga whales are, you know, incredible creatures. Their calls – They're known as the canaries of the sea. They have a very high-frequency, high-pitched tone to their noises that they make, but they make lots of different kinds of noises. They can emit up to eleven different kinds of sounds—crackles, whistles, trills, squawks—all sorts of things. But, it's been rumored that these whales can emit noises that sound like humans talking. And, for the first time, they've actually recorded NOC the whale making these noises, and they have it on tape. And we have it on tape.

R: Nah.

(''NOC makes unnervingly human-sounding noises'')

R: Did he maybe just swallow a kazoo?

(''laughter'')

J: Everybody has a drunk neighbor that makes those noises.

(''laughter'')

E: Oh, gosh. Who knows what the heck he was saying? You know, dolphins have been taught to mimic noises that kind of sound like human voices, but, before this, there's been no record of an animal ''spontaneously'' coming up and making these kinds of noises. This is the first evidence, the first hard evidence we have of it.

R: Here's – I have a theory. I have a theory. I have a theory that – so, whales, in general, are incredibly intelligent –

E: Oh yeah.

R: – possibly as smart as us, but they don't want thumbs, or any way to talk to us –

E: Or fire.

R: – and I feel like they do, basically – That's true. No, I saw Spongebob once. There was fire under the sea. I think it can be done.

S: Yep, but they don't have nanotechnology, though.

R: They don't. So, my theory is that whales are basically, like – they have – it's like they have locked-in syndrome, you know? Where they're just –

J: Oh, no.

R: – super-intelligent, and there's all these people around them, and they're just messing with them –

J: So, he was screaming, actually –

R: Yeah! And, so, he's been like, his whole life, he's been in this stupid little – like, he's in captivity, right? So, he's been in this stupid little aquarium, and he's just, like, "I hate all of you! And I'm going to will myself to tell you, because you're too stupid to understand!"

E: So, basically, what's going on here is, the whale has learned to change – rapidly change pressure within its naval cavity in order to create these sounds. And, it hasn't – the whale is able to over-inflate what's known as its vestibular sac in its blowhole, which is normally acts to stop water from basically coming in. So, the whale is going through a lot of, you know, effort, essentially, to try to make these noises. And I'm sure they're going to be trying to figure out exactly, you know, basically, ''why'' is the whale doing this?

S: Well, he just – this whale was – did spend his life in captivity –

E: Yeah.

S: – so, he did hear human speech a lot, and maybe he's just, to some extent, mimicking the sounds that he grew up hearing his whole life.

J: It's definitely – it definitely has a human sound to it, in the cadence and everything.

S: Yeah.

J: I mean, he's intelligent enough to mimic a human, which is really cool.

R: Yeah.

J: And, then, you always think, you know, if he can mimic a human—if his brain is advanced that much—you know, maybe he –

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But, is he mimicking humans or making fun of humans? You know, like people make fun of other languages?

R: Yeah, he's just like "Weh! Weh! Weh! This is what you sound like!"

E: Yeah. You stupid bald monkey and (''inaudible'')! Get out of here!

B: Sounds like a false dichotomy.

=== PANDAS Controversy (26:18)===
* [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/a-pandas-story/ A PANDAS Story]

S: So, we're going to talk about – going from talking about beluga whales to talking about PANDAS! Except, we're not talking about pandas, because we're talking about –

E: Wait.

R: Stop toying with my emotions, Steve!

S: I had to put a cute picture of a panda up there for you, Rebecca. We are talking about pediatric autoimmune –

R: It makes sense.

S: – neuropsychiatric disorder associated with –

E: I didn't know PANDA was an acronym. Cool!

R: Steve, I miss the panda.

S: – streptococcal infection—or, PANDAS. See? There's a panda.

(''laughter, cooing'')

E: Aww!

R: Yay.

S: We're talking about PANDAS –

E: Aww.

R: Boo.

J: Oh.

E: That's worse.

S: – which is a legitimately controversial medical diagnosis! So, essentially, what happens is, children suddenly develop ticks—like Tourette syndrome—and psychiatric disorders—obsessive–compulsive disorder—and it is thought that, in some cases, that it is actually – the inciting event is an infection—bacteria—streptococcal infection. Now, of course, it's always difficult to establish the reality of a new disease. Unless you get all your ducks in a row, and all the, you know, pathology all adds up, it's sometimes difficult to identify a legitimate new syndrome and to prove that – cause and effect. So, correlation is one thing. As we know, correlation is not ''necessarily'' causation. And, so, the syndrome exists. There are – the number of physicians who have identified the sudden onset psychiatric – neuropsychiatric disorder, and in some cases it is temporally associated with a streptococcal infection. But that's not the same thing as saying that the strep infection ''caused'' the neuropsychiatric syndrome. So, that's – and there's the controversy. Now, of course, we live in the modern Internet age. So, as soon as a scientist says, "I think that there's this syndrome—I want to call it PANDAS—and – sort of, you know, a psychiatric syndrome provoked by a bacterial infection", of course, there are now support groups, and there's groups on the Internet, and there's patient groups supporting this diagnosis before the science is even settled. And, then, of course, once that happens, when you try to do more science, or have any kind of discussion about whether or not this is a real syndrome, you have parents and patient groups and advocacy groups, you know, calling you all kinds of nasty names and saying there's a conspiracy against people with PANDAS, it's all the insurance companies and Big Pharma and evil doctors or whatever. So, that's the situation that we're in the middle of right now, unfortunately, is that, before the science is settled, you know, there's the scientific controversy, then there's the public controversy. This came to the media attention recently because of a 16-year-old girl called Elizabeth Wray. She developed, you know, a syndrome like PANDAS with ticks and psychological disorders, was diagnosed by a physician with PANDAS, and then was transferred to Boston's Children's Hospital for – presumably for further treatment of PANDAS. Now, the story that is going around the PANDAS community is that once she got to Boston University—or Boston Children's Hospital—she was told – the parents were told, "We don't believe that PANDAS is real – that it exists", and then they essentially admitted their daughter to the psychiatric unit and started treating her with psychiatric medications. Now, I don't know if that's true, because the doctors and the hospital are not telling their side of the story because of patient confidentiality. So, we don't know what their side of the story is. We only know the parents' side of the story, filtered through the PANDAS community. Unfortunately, now there's – this story has taken on a life of its own. There's a Free Elizabeth Wray movement going on within the PANDAS community, they're telling all kinds of horror stories about Boston Children's Hospital, and, you know, we can't verify any of it. What's interesting in reading about it is that each side has their narrative—and I wrote about this on Science-Based Medicine—because one of the things that – the ideas that we're wrestling with in the skeptical community is that—well, all right, we have, I think, a good approach to critical thinking, we understand a lot about self-deception, about the nature of science and pseudoscience—but we don't always have a good story to tell the public, or we have a hard time convincing mainstream outlets that we have – that our story is an interesting and good one. You know, we have to really market our narrative—the skeptical narrative. When you read about stories like this, the PANDAS proponents have a really compelling emotional narrative. It may be total B.S.—i don't know—but it's very compelling. They have a story of a child suffering from an unusual disease, parents who just want to do what's right for her—I believe all those things are correct—and then they are, essentially, being abused by a dismissive and skeptical medical establishment who doesn't believe in this disease, and that is treating their child with perhaps harmful, you know, psychiatric medications. They even – this went to court. Apparently, the hospital thought that the parents were being negligent in not allowing them to give proper standard of care—psychiatric treatment—to their child, and they wanted to have custody taken away from the parents, and they wanted to admit Elizabeth to a locked psychiatric ward—again, not sure – I can't verify those from the hospital's side of things. A judge – a Massachusetts judge essentially made her a ward of the state while they sorted out what was going on, but they did not grant the hospital their request to treat her in the way that they wanted to. So, they essentially just – the state took her out of everybody's hands for a moment – for the moment. So, it's interesting. Of course, the PANDAS community, again, is up in arms, you know. The court essentially took custody away from these parents that are only trying to do what's right for their daughter. But, of course, you could see the other narrative—you know, let's assume that the physicians think that—even if you think – whether or not you think PANDAS really exists—they think that she has a psychiatric illness, the parents are in denial, they're pursuing this false diagnosis, and they're, you know, refusing standard medical care. That's a story, too.

B: What if you just pulled out the whole strep association, and just treat it like a "pandisorder"? Is their beef that it's associated with strep, and they don't think there's any association? Why don't they just treat it like a neuropsychiatric disorder –

S: Yeah.

B: – and forget about the whole strep association?

S: Well, because the strep association would lead you to treat with things like antibiotics. So, that's the question: Should you treat it with antibiotics, or should you treat her like a psychiatric (''inaudible'') patient?

J: Why not both? I mean, why wouldn't you –

S: Well, she has had at least one round of antibiotics. You can also treat it like an autoimmune disease, with, like, intravenous globulin, for example. So, I mean, these are real medical questions. Do we treat it like an infection, do we treat it like a post-infectious auto-immune disease, or do we treat it like a psychiatric disorder? Those are real questions.

J: Steve, are you saying pandas don't exist? Let me just get this straight.

(''laughter'')

S: So, well, I did – to give a serious answer to your sarcastic question, I did –

R: My favorite kind.

S: – take the opportunity – I'm good that way. I'm good that way. I did take the opportunity just to familiarize myself with the PANDAS literature—again, I always emphasize, I'm no an expert in this, but I can read the literature and give my opinion like a science journalist—i think it's genuinely controversial. When I read the research, there's lots of – the ducks are not in a row. So, when you do things like treat kids who apparently have PANDAS with antibiotics in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, they don't necessarily improve. And, if you look for the antibodies that are supposed to be there, they don't necessarily correlate with the disease onset or with the existence of strep. So –

B: So, this is clearly not like autism and vaccines. It's just more complicated than that.

S: So, no. So, right. So, autism and vaccines, like, I would say, that's been studied enough to say that autism's – that autism is not caused by vaccines. We can say that. We can make the negative statement. I cannot make the negative statement that PANDAS does not exist, only that the research so far has not reached the threshold where we can agree that it does exist and that there is some actual negative data—there's some positive data, too—so it's legitimately controversial. It did remind me, though, of the chronic Lyme disease controversy—

R: Yeah.

S: —which is very common in New England—again, where they think that a number of symptoms, including neurological symptoms, can be caused by a bacterial infection and treated with antibiotics. And the same – there's a lot of overlap in those two communities, you know.

J: Steve, are you saying that the public has unrealistic expectations?

S: Well, I think – it's partly that. I mean, I think the public is uncomfortable with the uncertainty, and they like this sort of hero–villain narrative, so they paint the medical community as the villains, and—except for those maverick physicians who understand. They're Lyme-literate, or they understand PANDAS, so they're the heroes—and, then, the insurance companies don't want to pay for, you know, over-and-over recurrent courses of IV antibiotics, so they're the villains, you know. They're not—I'm not defending insurance companies, but sometimes they actually – sometimes they're right. They don't want to pay for things that are not science-based or evidence-based. So, it's complicated. And, you know, how do we – so, how do we deal with a child with this disorder when we don't know what the best scientific answer is—we don't know if it's autoimmune, infectious, or psychiatric? We just have to, you know, do the best we can—and there may be different physicians who would take different approaches—but to portray it as "PANDAS definitely exists. If you don't believe in it, you're dismissive and you're mean and evil, or you're protecting some kind of Big Pharma grant that you're getting"—they always bring that up—rather than saying, "You know, we really want to know the right answer, but we just haven't found it yet. It's still – it's legitimately controversial."

J: Yeah, I think what you're saying does confirm what I was thinking, is that the public wants an answer, science is not yet done figuring this one out, and –

S: Yeah. Like the earthquake one, right?

J: Yeah.

S: Sometimes the answer is, "We don't know yet", you know. "We need to do more research". In medicine, we have to make decisions with imperfect, you know, information, so, you know.

J: Wouldn't it be typical, too – like, let's say that this is happening over and over again –

S: Yeah.

J: – like, at some point, some doctors are going to come up with different ideas, they're going to try it out, you know. The trial-and-error process happens, and—i hate to say it, but—this girl is probably going to be one of the people that gets tested on with new ideas.

S: Well, I mean – well, if you're really testing then you should be doing a research protocol. If you're just applying the best knowledge that we have to an individual patient, that's – a certain amount of trial and error with that that's not really experimentation. So, there is a difference there. So, I don't know. The other interesting question that I'm kind of alluding to is, what role do the patient or the advocacy groups play? I think, a lot of times, that they are helpful in raising awareness for a disease or a disorder and raising funding, and advocating for patients. You know, I've seen, I think, there's a lot of very effective, very good patient advocacy groups out there. But, sometimes, they put their nickel down on a specific scientific answer, and that's not their job.

J: Yeah.

S: It's not their job to predict or demand that science give them the answer they want. And, you know, unfortunately, some people want the answer to be "an infection"—not "genes", not, you know, "We don't know".

J: Yeah. It's curable. That's the one they want.

S: Of course, who – that's the answer I would want to have! "It's something outside that is, you know, foreign, that can be cured, and that can reverse my child to the way that they were". Who – every parent wants that to be the answer, but sometimes you – you know, you have to step back from what you want and listen to the evidence. That's the – that's the scientist's, that's the physician's job, you know. You should just let them do their job, you know.

J: All right, so, I want to bring up a quick side point on this.

S: Yeah.

J: So, as an example, let's say, fifty years ago, let's say this was happening. What stance do you think the public would have differently than what we're seeing today?

S: It's the same, and this ''did'' happen fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, you know, she would be diagnosed with neurosyphilis—maybe not somebody who was sixteen, but that was the stand-in for what we now would, you know, the same subculture would diagnose with chronic Lyme. There were believers in that. There were physicians who believed in treatments like chelation therapy, you know, and science proved it wrong, and they said, "Well, we don't care, we're going to still do it. We're going to come up with – We're just going to keep coming up with special pleading and alternate theories, and form our own societies and our own – and just keep doing it, and say that it's all a conspiracy."

J: Mm-hmm.

S: So, but, I think that it's just the turnaround time is so much faster because of the Internet. Like, another example: CCSVI, right? The alleged blockage in the veins that drained blood from the brain, causing multiple sclerosis. It's that – that whole process—of Dr. Zamboni proposing this entity and a treatment, to it being researched, to it being refuted, to, you know, patient advocacy groups springing up and calling for conspiracies and calling for research and demanding that science give them the answer that they want—all has taken place within a few years. We've seen that cycle happen right before our eyes. So, the Internet is just making it happen a lot quicker and a lot bigger, I think. But it's always been this way.

J: So do you have any ideas on what we could do? Could the skeptical community do anything to help this (''inaudible'')?

S: Well, I think what we do is, we discuss the issue from a science, logical, critical thinking point of view, you know. We point out the role of science in this, and we, I think, we try to bring the public discourse to a level that can deal with it in a more productive way, rather than the conspiracy mongering, sort of lowest-common-denominator that it would otherwise sink to.

J: Yeah.

=== Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44)===
* pnd

S: Well, let's move on. Jay, we're talking about how the media presents stories about paranormal activities.

J: Yeah, this is interesting. So, a professor decided to—Professor Brewer decided that—because what we're seeing over the years is a very obvious interest, in the general public, to news articles, and to TV shows, that talk about ghosts—and, you know, we've all seen the ''Ghost Hunter'' TV show—and, to people like us, at best, we watch it, and it's fun, right? 'Cause it's ridiculous and entertaining, and we like to see people from our perspective—a skeptical perspective—they're acting foolishly. But, there are a lot of people that are watching this, and they're riveted. Like, they really love it and they think a lot of it's real—and, I'm sure, to a certain degree, I can't say everyone that watches it and thinks everything about it is real—but, in the end, there's a huge entertainment factor there, and, unfortunately, to us skeptics, we feel like there's a lot of people that simply believe it, and that's their favorite entertainment. And I know a lot of people—I'm friends with a lot of people—that literally have active discussions on Facebook all the time, that I dip into, that are talking about the latest TAPS show. It would be be, "Can you believe it?" and "I knew that place was haunted!", and they're like, you know, getting whooped up.

S: I don't get it. I just don't get it. Nothing happens!

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

R: That's not true! That's not true.

E: Like "Seinfeld", yeah.

S: But, I mean, but they never find a ghost.

R: Steve, Steve. Did you feel that?

(''laughter'')

R: That happens! That happens all the time.

(''applause'')

R: They feel so much.

J: The thing is, you know –

S: I want to see a [http://www.hark.com/clips/pnzwffccqk-10-people-witnessed-a-free-floating-full-torso-vaporous-apparition full, floating torso] drift across the camera lens. Then I'll be impressed.

B: I still won't believe it. (''inaudible'')

S: No, but at least it'll be entertaining.

J: A lot of the shows, though, they're all right on the cusp, you know, of the noise, right? They're always right on that cusp. They're always ''just'' seeing something, or something falls over, you know? Or there's a noise from upstairs, or whatever, and it's never – they never give you that, you know? You don't get that –

R: This, actually – this came up—tomorrow I'll be talking about the [http://paranormalroadtrip.org/ paranormal road trip] that I just went on with [http://www.jonronson.com/ Jon Ronson] and [http://richardwiseman.wordpress.com/ Richard Wiseman] that got us here—and, at one of the stops, we were at a – we did talk to someone in a "haunted museum", and she was telling us that "the ghost hunters were there, and it was very exciting because there was a noise in the attic, and there were steps (''step sounds'') even though nobody was up there, and so the ghost hunter ran over and climbed up the ladder and looked into the attic, and, just then, a lady, dressed all in white, came ''flying at him'', and he shrieked in horror and fell down the ladder, and it was all really dramatic", and we were just completely blown away, obviously. We were riveted –

E: Yeah, well.

R: – and we said, "We cannot ''wait'' to see that footage!"

(''groans'')

R: – and she said, "Actually, I mean, it was so good, they didn't actually get that on camera.

B: Darn it!

R: No, all the cameras were down in another room somewhere."

J: Yeah, of course.

E: Well.

S: That was like –

R: "There's literally no evidence of it", though. Yeah.

S: – Ed Warren. We were investigating Ed Warren. He told us this story of being in a haunted house, and they had a local news crew over there, and, like, for two hours, they videotaped things flying around the room, you know, like, I say, really impressive, you know, smoking-gun evidence of paranormal activity. We're like, "Great! Can we see that footage?"

E: Sure!

J: "Yeah!"

S: "You know what? They taped over it for the news segment later that night."

(''laughter'')

S: Go figure. Stupid news crew.

J: So, I – I'm going to ask a couple of questions that I want you guys to not answer right now, but just think about it, 'cause these are pretty obvious questions, but I think they're interesting. "Why do people believe, or like to believe, in the paranormal? What's the attraction?" It's an interesting question if you think about it. There are people that ''really'' seek it out and love it. And there's something exciting about it. There's something kind of visceral about it. To my mind—to a skeptical mind—I don't have a connection to it. I just don't see what that allure is, other than, maybe—because I do like horror movies, and I do like to get scared. I love being actually scared sitting in a movie theater. It doesn't happen that often, but when it does happen it's very thrilling—and, maybe they're just having a lot of those thrilling moments. It's easier for them to get scared.

R: But, also, I mean, don't you think, maybe, it's got something to do with the fact that, maybe, we're not going to rot in the ground and die and never see our loved ones again...? Maybe?

J: Maybe? It's – you know, I'm not going to say no, but when I think about it, there's something thrilling about it. I'm not thinking, as I'm being thrilled in a horror movie, "Oh, I'm defying death by being thrilled right now!" That's not happening. I'm just – there is something – it's like, you know, eating something really spicy that hurts.

S: Yeah, but to –

J: It hurts, but it's good at the same time, right?

E: Uh.

S: To a lot of people, definitely, you know, evidence of ghosts is evidence of the afterlife. That's the appeal.

R: Yeah, and when we talk to people who describe their own experiences often—they're talking about Grandma and Grandpa and whatnot coming back to them and telling them that it's all OK—you know, and they're very comforting messages –

E: Yeah, which is why –

S: They want a narrative.

E: Which is why they watch these shows. It reinforces these positions that these people have, you know, and they derive a certain, you know, need out of it.

J: I wonder, though, because those shows are ''so bad''! They're so bad. Can they really be, you know?

R: I mean, there's a lot of – No, no, no! Personally, I would derive a lot of happiness from knowing that my dearly beloved grandmother, who I adored when I was young—she died when I was young—I would get so much happiness knowing that she was just screwing around with asshole ghosthunters on TV. Just, like, brushing past them and then disappearing whenever the cameras come out you know? That would give me a lot of satisfaction, knowing that.

J: Well, maybe the skeptical version of it is watching a YouTube video of Hitchens just tearing some moron apart, right? That's our version of that?

E: That releases endorphins, yeah.

J: 'Cause that makes me believe in something, right?

E: Yeah.

J: It gives me a thrill, but – OK, anyways. So, there is an article we're talking about here. So, Dr. Paul Brewer, who is – teaches at the University of Deleware, developed a study that was recently published in the journal ''Science: Communication'' that examines the influence of the media on the public's perception of the paranormal. So, here is his test: He took four news articles that were similar to each other, but they had significant differences in some of the details. The essence of it was, he had an article on one end of the spectrum that described a paranormal effect with a paranormal investigator, and they were using instruments to measure things, or whatever. And, then, as you go down to the fourth article, the fourth article gets very descriptive about using, you know, faux scientific language to make the paranormal investigators sound scientifically-minded, and using scientific tools. And, what he found was, the more of the faux science that was in the article, the more that the people believed that the paranormal accounts were true. You know, it's kind of a kick in the gut for us skeptics, because—and for us scientists, because—they're using our lingo, and our vernacular, and the way that we go about presenting data, and they're fooling people with it—because, I think, the general public is trained to a certain degree to recognize scientific language and recognize the formality of science—and they're using that—and I don't know how deliberate it is. Maybe they figured it out for the TV shows, that, you know, "hey, the more we B.S. this, the more we make this meter look cool and we throw in, you know, technical jargon, the more people that are going to be interested in our TV show"—

B: I think they also believe it themselves, Jay. They think they're being scientific.

J: Yeah.

E: That's right, yeah.

B: That's a big part of it as well.

E: You bet they do.

J: So, Brewer said it wasn't just any story about paranormal investigators that made people believe in ghosts and haunted houses. It was a story about how they were scientific. So, he puts a big emphasis on the science there. And, the good news was that he said that they might look at this and say, "Well, all it takes is this sprinkle of some acronyms in there, and wave around a cool-looking thing that beeps, and suddenly people believe in ghosts and haunted houses." Now, the one cool thing about his research was, he also found that if, at the end of the article, there was a skeptical disclaimer that said "This is the skeptical perspective. This is why that investigation was wrong. This is the mistakes that they made and this is why these instruments are bogus."—if they threw that in there—it actually made the people believe in the claims a lot less.

R: What?

J: Yeah, it actually worked.

R: The thing that we're always complaining about—that, like, one sentence that presents –

S: The token skeptic?

E: The token skeptic, yeah.

R: – the entirety of skeptical opinion—that actually does make a difference?

J: Well, I don't want to – I don't want to say that the token skeptic 30-second B.S. blurb that they cut on most of the TV shows that we see works. The way that he presented it, it seemed a little bit like it had more teeth. It wasn't a quick thing. I think it was a little bit more of a takedown.

S: So, there was a series of studies about ten years ago, where they looked at the same thing—at the presentation of pseudoscience in a documentary and its effect on people's belief in the subject matter, like belief in UFOs or alien visitation—and they found some similar things in that, when it was presented scientifically, that absolutely increased belief. They also found that if, at any point in time, it was said—there was any kind of disclaimer saying—the following claims are true, or that the following claims may or may not be true, or whatever—anything positive or negative—reduced belief, or reduced the increase in belief, following the segment. So, anything that triggered people's questioning about, is it true or is it not true, was actually a good thing. But they found the opposite in that the token skepticism at the end—a scientist coming in at the end and saying, you know, "We've evaluated this, and it's not true", ''increased'' belief in the thing, because it lent legitimacy to the whole enterprise—the very fact that a scientist was spending their time and giving their attention to it.

J: Oh, yeah.

S: So –

B: Is that a cultural change –

S: Well, maybe –

B: – or is it the study?

S: Well, all right. I don't know. I don't know what the answer to that is. But, one possible interpretation may be that the ''token'' ineffective skepticism actually has a negative effect in raising belief in the paranormal because it's lending false legitimacy, but if you give ''effective'', you know, analysis—

B: Yeah.

S: —effective skeptical analysis—maybe you could reverse that and bring it back down.

J: Yeah, from from what the article said, it was, I think, an equal paragraph on the skeptical perspective –

S: Yes.

J: – and, specifically –

S: We really do have to argue for equal time and for getting the skeptical position –

J: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

S: – not the talking head blurb token skepticism may not – may still be counterproductive.

J: And the thing that he said was that there was that the article, the paragraph, did a takedown of the people that were claiming to be scientists.

S: Mm-hmm.

J: So, it stripped their expertise away, in essence.

S: Yeah. Yeah.

J: So, you know, I think it's interesting. I think that we're hard-wired for these things. I find, unfortunately, more and more TV programs—hey, you guys noticing, what's with the reality TV? Like, why is reality TV taking over television? Have you asked yourself that question?

S: 'Cause it's cheap.

E: It's cheap.

S: It's cheap, yeah.

(''applause'')

== Live Q&A (51:06) ==
* Questions from the CSICon audience

S: OK, we do have a few minutes for some Q&A. If you want to ask us a question—you can ask us anything. We won't necessarily answer, but you can ask—

Q1: Rebecca, I hate to break this to you, but NOC the beluga died five years ago.

R: God damn it!

J: Aww.

(''groans'')

R: God damn it, Tim Farley!

J: Tim Farley!

Q2: On a more serious note, Jay, apropos of what you said, I'm waiting for the skeptics community to have some reaction to the television show [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Island_Medium ''The Long Island Medium''] –

J: Oh.

S: Yeah.

Q2: – especially when she has kids on the program and she's telling them that, you know, she's talking to their dead parent.

J: Yeah, yeah. It's pathetic.

R: Oh. What a sick line.

S: I haven't brought myself to watch it yet. You know, I know it's out there. At some point, I think we probably should bite the bullet and then do an actual review, but I – the reports that I heard are, as you say, really abusive –

E: Yeah.

S: – very exploitative, not just that it's totally gullible nonsense. It's really exploitative. Yep.

Q3: Love your podcast, listen a lot. Always wondered whose voice says, "And now it's time for Science or Fiction".

J: That's changed over the years. The –

S: The current voice is –

R: It's Izzy.

S: – Izzy. Izzy.

J: Izzy Lawrence, yeah.

R: Izzy Lawrence. She has a podcast called [http://sundayssupplement.blogspot.com/ "Sundays Supplement"]. She's a skeptic and a stand-up comedian in England (''inaudible'').

S: So that's a genuine British accent, unlike some of the previous people who have said this.

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

S: Yes?

Q4: Yeah, with this – the Italian decision about the geologists and the – not predicting the volcano—or the earthquakes—there could – there's, like, a silver lining here. This could be a boon to the insurance industry, because maybe geologists and seismologists need to take out malpractice insurance.

J: Mm-hmm.

R: That's your "silver lining"? The insurance companies? Like, "Well, with all of this, I was really worried about the HMOs, but it looks like I'll be all right."

Q5: All right. Hi, guys! I love the podcast and I love everything you guys do. I'm –

S: Really? Everything we do? You don't know half the stuff that we do.

J: Yeah!

R: You don't want to know.

Q5: Certainly everything I'm aware that you guys do –

S: Oh, OK.

Q5: – and assume you do, which is really (''inaudible'')

S: Good caveat.

J: He hasn't seen [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1X1FOZmmVA "Occ: The Skeptical Caveman"] yet, so –

Q5: Oh, I certainly have!

J: Oh, and you like it?

Q5: Yeah, it's really good stuff!

R: Don't sound so surprised, Jay.

J: Just kidding.

Q5: Anyway. I'm a teaching assistant, and I help teach a lot of science courses—a lot of basic science courses—and we teach the scientific method—and most people understand the scientific method—but there's this other part that never gets explicitly put in there, like, this honesty and integrity built into it, like you need to make sure that the effect that you're trying to explain is really there, and that kind of stuff. Have you guys come up with a really good way to explain that part of science to people?

S: You mean that you just have to be ethical? Or you have to really care about the truth, I guess, is what you're saying?

Q5: Yes.

S: Yeah. I mean, I think—you're right, that is sort of implicit in the scientific process, that, you know, you're trying to find the actual answer, not just work backwards to the answer that you want to have—so, I think that's also implicit in scientific skepticism. I mean, that's part of – you know, one of our core values is, we want to know what's really ''really'' true, not just what ''seems'' to be true, and sometimes you have to dig really, really hard, and you have to be skeptical of your own conclusions. I mean, that ''is'' skepticism, I think, what you're saying. So, I think – combine that with the scientific method and you have scientific skepticism.

J: Yeah, but I think he was asking more about teaching the idea that you – we want to know the truth and be passionate about the truth –

S: Yeah.

J: – and I – it's a hard thing to teach, I think. I think that, you know, we're all kind of freakish in the idea that we're into skepticism. It's – it is something that you could teach your kids, absolutely. But, you know, how do you teach an adult to get into the truth, and get rid of all the garbage that's in their heads? It's hard, as, you know, as people get older, it's hard for them to learn that, I think. But I do agree with you. I think we need to inspire kids to—first off, teach them skepticism. Let's just start with that—I think that the caring will come with that.

== Science or Fiction (55:19) ==

S: "Science or Fiction". I'm going to read you three items—two are real, one is fiction—and then we'll poll the audience. We'll see which one you think is the fiction. So, here we go. [http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1112720858/astronauts-blood-pressure-low-gravity-102612/ Item number one]: "A new study finds that astronauts who spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% increased risk of heart attacks and strokes."

J: Whoa.

S: [http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/67117-first-feathered-dinosaurs-found-in-north-america Number two]: "Scientists have discovered the first feathered dinosaur in the western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers." And [http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S35/06/74S40/ item number three]: "Researchers find that, at the molecular level, evolutionary changes can be highly predictable." All right, so, let's start by polling the audience. Applaud for the one that you think is the ''fiction''. How many people here think that the one about astronauts and heart attacks is the fiction?

(''applause'')

S: OK. How many think the feathered dinosaur is the fiction?

(''very limited applause'')

S: OK.

E: Oh.

S: And how many think that the evolution-is-predictable is the fiction?

(''applause'')

S: OK. I think that was 3–1–2.

R: Hmm.

S: Let's start at this end, Evan. Why don't you tell us what you think?

E: OK –

S: And, I'd like to remind my co-hosts, this is a live show. Keep it quick.

E: "New study finds that astronauts who have spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% chance of – increased risk of heart attack and strokes." OK, so, hmm. What would be the trick here? "More than one month in microgravity. That is a long time, essentially, but 35%—I don't know. That seems like kind of a high number. A lot of things do happen to people in space—microgravity and so forth—and they do carefully study that and the effects on astronauts and so forth, so perhaps that one is true. Second one: "First feathered dinosaurs, western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers." I have no idea about that one. Not a clue. Not a clue. I'll jump to the third one. "Researchers find that, at the ''molecular level'', evolutionary changes can be highly predictable. At the molecular level. That's fascinating. Now, the audience said that that one was going to be most likely the fiction.

S: ''You're'' trying to convince ''them''.

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

E: Well, you know, I think they convinced me, more than I'm going to convince them, of that one, right? I think – at the molecular level. I don't see it. I just can't see it happening at that level. "Evolutionary change is highly predictable." There's a bit of a vagary there in regards to the highly predictable at that level. I'll say that that one is fiction. I agree with the audience.

S: OK. Rebecca?

R: Yeah, I found the audience's argument very convincing as well.

(''laughter'')

R: I have heard about health problems associated with low gravity—zero gravity—"35% increased" – it's the specifics that I'm not sure about. That doesn't seem ridiculous to me, that—35% increase, relatively speaking—i, you know, that doesn't sound too crazy to me. I feel like that could be – easily be science, knowing what I know about other health risks in zero gravity. I do think that there was recently a feathered dinosaur discovered. My problem here is that I believe it—I could be completely wrong about this—but I believe it was discovered in North America, and I do believe it was the first one in North America. Those are my thoughts. But, is that the first one in the western hemisphere? I don't know. So, now I'm trying to think, if there had been one discovered in South America before, because that's still the western hemisphere.

S: Last time I checked, yeah.

R: So, but, would you be that niggling? I'm not sure. And so that leaves us with the idea that evolutionary changes are highly –

S: "Predictable."

R: – predictable—thank you—on the molecular level. Yeah, that does seem way out there to me, 'cause it's written in such a way that makes me think that you have reversed that. But maybe that's what you're trying to make me think. So, for me, it's between the first and the third one, because—and, I should say that I question the first one simply because it doesn't seem out of the ordinary to me, and so you might be trying to, uh, to switch it up—''so I'm staring deep into your eyes, 'cause I don't normally get this chance''.

E: Yeah, it's like a poker read here, yeah.

R: This is like – yeah, this is like a game of poker.

E: Poker.

R: You just look bored.

(''audience'')

R: That's what I'm getting from you right now, is an intense feeling of –

S: What, are you trying to cold read me now?

R: – boredom. I'm seeing an "M".

J: (''in unison'') I'm seeing an "M".

E: I see the number "3".

R: "M – Murder you if you don't get me the answer." That's what I'm getting from you.

E: "M – Murder".

R: So I'm going to go with the audience. I'm going to say that the evolutionary change is –

S: Evolutionary predictable. OK.

R: Yeah.

S: Bob?

B: OK, live show. The astronaut one, number one. 35% seems high to me. I know there's some major issues for extended stays in microgravity. They've gotta exercise, like, hours a day just to maintain what – you know, some muscle tone. But a month doesn't seem long enough, and 35% seems a little bit too much. 'Cause, I know that, when they come back, yeah, things can be tough in 1''g'', but they get it back fairly quickly. So let's look at the other ones here. "First feathered dinosaur"? Yeah. Would it be the first? I know there – they discovered so many in China, but they could be the first one in the western hemisphere. "Another dinosaur group." You would think it would be another dinosaur group if it was the first in the western hemisphere. The third one? Yeah, this one's a little sketchy, but, I don't know, there could be some pattern – there could be some pattern that they detected at the molecular level. "Highly predictable." "Highly" is bothering me. It's – what do you mean by "highly"? Yeah, it's between one and three.

S: And, therefore....

B: And therefore, all right. I'm going to go with the microgravity. 35% just seems like too much.

S: OK.

E: Oooh.

R: It's all right. Hedge your bets.

J: Well, OK. Number two I have no reason to doubt—the one about the feathered dinosaurs. The one about the evolutionary changes can be highly predictable? I'm curious what you mean by "evolutionary changes". I mean, are you saying that they can predict—and I know you're not going to answer this, but I'm questioning—can they predict that a mutation is going to occur, or are they predicting what the evolutionary change is going to be? Am I crazy in asking that question?

S: No. I'm not going to answer it, but you can ask.

(''laughter'')

J: So, I think that they can predict that there's going to be a mutation. I don't think that they can predict what that mutation is going to be. And I think that that's vague, and I'm not going to take that one. I'm going to go with the one about the astronauts as being the fake for a couple of reasons: One, 35% does seem like an awful lot. I do think that that would mean that some heart – some astronauts would have had heart attacks, and I've never heard of an astronaut having a heart attack.

R: Really?

J: Have you?

R: I don't really look into it that much.

J: Well, there you go. That's it. I'm done.

S: All right. So, very quickly, let's see if they changed your mind. Who in the audience—again, applaud again—who thinks the astronauts is the fiction?

(''applause'')

R: Definitely more.

S: Feathered dinosaurs?

(''two or three people applaud'')

S: Thank you. And, evolution being predictable?

(''applause'')

E: Ooh.

J: We've had a major swing, Steve.

R: They split!

E: Might be a little (''inaudible'')

S: I think we swung them to number one!

R: Yeah.

S: But I can't convince anybody that this feathered dinosaur thing is fiction.

J: These two people here!

S: "Scientists have discovered the first feathered dinosaur –

R: You got these guys! What, are they (''inaudible'')

S: They're nobody.

(''laughter'')

S: – in the western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers." And that one is science.

(''groans'')

S: Sorry. I do appreciate it, but that was science.

J: Boring! Who cares?

R: So you guys do suck, though.

(''groans'')

R: No, I'm kidding! I'm kidding.

S: No, they were brave. They were willing to go out there and give it a chance.

J: Right, did you really even have to read that one? Just come on.

S: Imagine if they were right! All right –

E: Yeah, right?

S: – so, the scientist is Darla Zelenitsky. She discovered—and her team—an Ornithomimus dinosaur—which is in the group the ''ornithomimids'', and that is a group of theropods—and it is the first feathered dinosaur in that group, and it was discovered in Alberta, Canada, so it's the first western hemisphere feathered dinosaur. Found three specimens, an adult and two juveniles. The juveniles have just downy feathers all over their body. The adult has the downy feathers but also has, you know, mature feathers and some partially-developed wings. So, it seems like the adults developed these proto-wings, probably not having anything to do with flight –

B: Mating.

S: – something that adults do that children don't do. Maybe something to do with mating, for example. And remarkably well-preserved. So, it increases also the number of different kinds of sediments in which feathered dinosaurs – the evidence of feathers can be found. So it's the first one in the western hemisphere, first of this kind of fossil find, and the first ornithomimid with feathers. Very interesting finding. All right. Let's go on to – I guess we'll go to number one: "A new study finds that astronauts who have spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% increased risk of heart attacks and strokes." Bob and Jay think this is the fiction, and they convinced a lot of the audience, and this one is the fiction.

(''applause'')

S: All right.

J: Thank you.

R: Good job. Good job.

S: So, I made that up.

(''laughter'')

E: The whole thing?

S: The real news item that inspired that is only tangentially related. What the study found was the explanation—or an explanation—for why astronauts who spend time in microgravity develop a condition known as orthostatic hypotension. What that means is that when you go from, say, lying down to a sitting or a standing position, normally your blood vessels would contract, would raise your blood pressure, maintain your blood pressure so that you don't pass out, you don't get lightheaded. But if you have orthostatic hypotension then, upon standing, your vessels don't contract to compensate, your blood pressure drops –

B: You get lightheaded.

S: – profusion to the brain decreases, you can get lightheaded or even to the point of passing out. Astronauts develop this very commonly after a short stay in microgravity, and almost always if they've been in microgravity for a long time. The explanation for this is that spending time in microgravity impairs the ability of the vessels to contract, apparently because they don't have to, so they just sort of get lazy, and they – whatever feedback mechanism is there to tell those blood vessels to contract, you know, doesn't function for a while, and then, almost like the body has to relearn that reflex once they're back in gravity. So, didn't seem that surprising a finding, but that's what they found. All right, number three: "Researchers find that, at the molecular level, evolutionary changes can be highly predictable." And that one is science. That was definitely the ringer. What the scientists showed – they looked at different insect species, but in many different groups of insects—so, insects separated by three hundred million years of evolutionary history. Insects have been around for a long time—and what they found was that insects which eat a certain kind of plant that produces a certain kind of poison all evolved one of a very few number of possible molecular solutions to eating that poison, even though they were completely separated along different evolutionary paths. And what they said is, essentially, if there is a limited number of solutions to a problem at the molecular level, that one of those changes will occur in an evolutionary line is actually – becomes highly predictable, that you could predict that, even if they're completely separated evolutionarily on different branches, separated by hundreds of millions of years of evolution, they're going to evolve the exact same mutation in the same protein that gives them the same ability to tolerate that toxin. So, the – at least on that level, the evolutionary changes become predictable. And they said – they thought that it was predictable to a surprising degree, is how the scientists characterized that. So, that was interesting, but, you know, it does make sense, if there's only so many solutions to a problem, evolution's probably going to hit upon one of those solutions independently, over and over again, in multiple different lines. We do see that type of convergent evolution. They were just talking about it on the molecular level. So, good work, Bob and Jay. You did a good job.

J: Thank you.

R: Well done.

(''applause'')

S: And well done to much of the audience.

== Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:08:11) ==

S: And, Jay, you have a quote to close out the show for us?

J: All right. So, this is a quote sent in by a listener named Timo from Taiwan, and I think it's really cool that someone from Taiwan is into the person whose quote this is. And the quote is,

<blockquote>Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.</blockquote>

J: Who said that?

Audience: Paul Kurtz!

J: Paul Kurtz! A skeptic of some note.

E: Yes.

(''applause'')

S: Thank you, everyone! And thanks for coming to CSICon 2012!

RW: "The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe"! Let's hear it!

(''whistling and applause'')

{{Outro1}}

== References ==
<references/>

{{Navigation}}

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-17T14:22:18Z

Cornelioid: /* Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:08:11) */ full segment

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|episodeDate = 3rd November 2012 
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|qowText = Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality. 
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|}}

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

RW: – a live edition of my favorite podcast and radio show. So, we're going to have Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Jay Novella, Even Bernstein, and – and a woman –

(''laughter'')

RW: – join us. It's the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe!

(''applause'')

S: Hello, and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

(''applause'')

S: Today is Thursday, October 25th, 2012, and we are live from [http://www.csiconference.org/ CSICon 2012].

(''applause'')

Joining me, as always, are Bob Novella –

B: Hey everybody!

(''cheers'')

S: – Rebecca Watson –

R: Hello, everyone!

(''cheers'')

''audience member'': I love you, Rebecca!

R: I love you, too!

S: – Jay Novella...Jay Novella –

J: Wooooo! Rebecca, yeah!

(''cheers'')

R: I love you, Jay!

S: – and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hello, Nashville!

(''cheers'')

S: So, how're you guys doing? How do you like Nashville?

J: It's awesome. I didn't – I thought people were going to literally be playing guitar when I got off the airplane.

B: Oh, come on, Jay.

S: Yeah, in the airport, you know?

J: Yeah.

== This Day in Skepticism (1:28) ==
November 3, 1957 Sputnik 2 launched

S: So, Rebecca, you always start us off with a This Day in Science and Skepticism. This show will be going up on November 3rd, so, did anything happen that day?

R: Nope.

(''laughter'')

B: Ever?

R: Oh, all right. One thing happened. One thing happened! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_2 Sputnik 2] happened.

S: ''Sputnik 2: The Revenge''.

(''laughter'')

R: ''Son of Sputnik''.

S: ''Son of Sputnik''.

J: ''Son of Sputnik''!

R: That's right. Sputnik 2 you might know as "the one that killed the puppy".

(''awwws'')

R: No? Aww, that's weird, 'cause I really thought that this would go over well at a live event! Yeah, Sputnik 2 is the craft that took Laika into orbit, Laika being the Soviet space dog who became the first animal in orbit—for about, like, 10 minutes, before she died.

E: Well, you know –

S: A couple of hours. It was a couple of hours. They thought he was going to survive for about ten days –

R: I think she's a "she".

S: – ''she'' was going to survive –

E: Eh.

R: Get it right, Steve!

S: You know, asexual Russian names, I mean, come on. But, they thought that Laika was going to survive for about ten days, but then they had a little mishap with the cooling system, and –

E: Oops.

S: Yeah. – got a little hot in the capsule—104 degrees, they said in (''inaudible'')

E: That'd be a hot dog. Yep.

(''groans'')

B: Oh, come on. My god.

E: Thank you. I'll be here all the weekend.

R: How – can we just take a moment, just to take a poll of the audience: How are our dead dog jokes doing? Good?

J: Yes!

(''applause'')

R: OK. All right. Yeah.

J: You know what? I didn't know until we researched this item that it was a one-way mission.

R: Yeah.

E: Mm-hmm.

J: That's really nasty.

S: Well, the capsule returned.

(''laughter'')

E: Yeah, well –

S: About 162 days later, it burned up in the atmosphere. But, yeah, they never intended to bring Laika back.

J: No, they actually were going to euthanize her with poison food after the tenth day, I think, right?

R: This is seriously the worst item ever. What was I thinking when I picked it?

S: There – there's Laika.

E: Aww. Aww.

R: Oh yeah! I didn't pick it! Steve forced me to!

E: But, we'd never know who this dog was if it didn't go on Sputnik 2, right? I mean, this would be an otherwise – another animal.

R: No, yeah, and I'm sure Laika appreciates the fame she gets from ''beyond the grave''.

E: She got her fifteen minutes.

== In Memorium ==
=== Paul Kurtz (3:45) ===
* 1925-2012

S: Well, we are going to start the new segment of the show with an ''in memoriam''. We do like to, on the ''Skeptic's Guide'', pause to remember those members of the skeptical community who have passed, and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] died several days ago, just the day before the organizers were coming down to the conference. He died on Sunday. He was 85 years old. It was 1925 to 2012, so that is 86. I can do math. (''audience laughter'') You'll know why i was confused in a moment.

R: 'Cause you're terrible at math?

S: Yes. So, before we get the show started, Ron Lindsay and Kendrick Frazier talked about Paul Kurtz. You know, he was one of the giants of the skeptical movement, of the skeptical community. You know, he was largely responsible for organizing the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, founding Prometheus Books, CFI, [http://www.secularhumanism.org/ Secular Humanism]. He was an academic, a philosopher. He really gave a lot of weight to the movement early on. He made it to that – he broke it to that next level. It wasn't that, you know, before he came on board. So he has to be remembered for that. We did have some interactions with Paul along the years. The first year that we started – (''audience cooing'')

R: Baby Steve!

E: Aww.

S: I was a little younger back then.

R: He's three years old there.

B: He's only half-grey there.

S: (''laughing'') I'm only half-grey!

E: A little less grey, yep.

S: You can mark my age by my greyness up until about ten years ago, when i went totally grey. Right when we got started, in 1996, you know, CSICOP, now CSI, you know, they were the big national skeptical organization. They'd definitely – They took us under their wing, you know, gave us their support, their local membership list, so that we could get our movement going. And i remember meeting Paul at the first World Skeptics Conference, and he was immediately—like, you know, your grandfather—like, you know, very, very comfortably took on that air of being a mentor. It's like, "Yeah, this is great. You're welcome to the skeptical movement." So i definitely remember him fondly in that way. A few years later, Paul organized a meeting of the local skeptical groups. In the picture here you can see me again with Bob, Perry, and Evan. The four of us came up together –

J: Now, if i remember correctly, Rebecca, you and i were off being badass somewhere else, right?

R: I think that's what was happening, yeah.

S: – and, i think, in the foreground, that's Colonel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Nickell Joe Nickell], isn't it?

E: Colonel.

S: Yeah, he had broke his leg in Spain, or something?

R: Round of applause for Colonel Joe Nickell!

E: I remember that.

(''applause'')

S: Joe actually is going to come up, and he's going to read a poem that he wrote, i believe, about Paul.

JN: Paul was a great supporter of the arts, and i hope he would have liked this. The poem is called "Book of Seasons: An elegy". (''Uncertain re: permission to reproduce poem'')

S: Thank you, Joe.

=== Leon Jaroff (7:34) ===
* 1926-2012

S: This same weekend, Saturday before the show, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_(magazine) Leon Jaroff] also died. ''He'' was 85, hence my confusion. So, Leon Jariff—not a big name in the skeptical community recently, and if you ask, you know, people at conventions like this if they knew who he was – I mean, in fact, right before the show Rebecca said to me, "Who's Leon Jaroff?"

R: (''indignant gasp'')

S: Sorry, Rebecca.

(''audience laughter'')

S: But he was perhaps one of the most skeptical journalists that we have had.

B: Yeah.

S: He was the science columnist for ''Time Magazine''. It was he who said, "You know, popularizing science is important, you know, we should start a science-dedicated magazine." And that was ''Discover Magazine''. That was him. He was not afraid to be a hard-nosed skeptic when writing about scientific issues. So, for example, when writing about chiropractors, [http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,213482,00.html he wrote],

<blockquote>
Chiropractors also employ a bewildering variety of weird practices to diagnose their patients. Some use applied kinesiology, a muscle test that supposedly can diagnose allergies and diseased organs. Hair analysis and iris readings are commonplace in the profession. Even sillier are many of the treatments that chiropractors use and recommend: homeopathic potions, colon irrigation, magnetic therapy, enzyme pills, colored-light therapy, and something called "balancing body energy," among other mystical procedures with undocumented effects.
</blockquote>

S: That's from a mainstream journalist writing in ''Time Magazine''. Do we see this kind of thing today? I don't think so.

B: Nope.

(''audience applause'')

S: So, you know, we do have to, I think, also note the support that Jaroff gave to such a good science journalism, and that kind of hard-nosed, skeptical science journalism is definitely something we miss. That's a void that, I think, that we in the skeptical community have to fill, but, unfortunately, it is a void.

== News Items ==
=== Big Bang Conference at CERN (9:31)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19870036 Big Bang and religion mixed in Cern debate]

S: Rebecca –

R: Yes!

S: – this is a different quote. It's not as good a quote.

<blockquote>
Science in isolation is great for producing stuff, but not so good for producing ideas.
</blockquote>

R: Mm-hmm.

S: Who said that?

R: That was said by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Pinsent Andrew Pinsent] at the Ramsey Center for Science and Religion. What I particularly liked about this quote is that it is completely reversed – it is the exact opposite of what I would have suggested.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I would say that science is actually really good at ideas, but, in order to produce stuff, you have to add something else. You know, like, they might be able to figure out lasers, but to make a CD player you need a marketing executive.

S: Or death ray.

R: Thank you. Yeah, of course. Why didn't I go there first?

(''laughter'')

R: Yeah, so, this quote comes from a recent article that the BBC produced: "Big Bang and religion mixed in CERN debates". Apparently, there was a conference recently that CERN held—you remember CERN, you know, the guys who, apparently, may have found –

J: Higgs!

R: – the Higgs boson.

S: A boson with Higgs-like properties.

R: A Higgs-like thing.

S: Boson, yeah.

R: A Higgish. I like "Higgish" –

B: "Higgish"?

R: – a little bit.

J: (''laughing'') "A little bit!"

S: "Higgy"?

B: (''singing, inaudible'') ''Higgy again."

R: So, yes. Apparently, I don't know the purpose – I don't know what, who dreamt this up, but what I'm thinking is that someone was concerned that they may have found a particle that many people know as the "God particle", and, so, they're concerned that they're going to be excommunicated or, you know, that people will rebel—religious people will rebel—against science. Basically, we'll have some sort of Dark Ages–esque thing happening, and, so, maybe somebody at CERN thought, "Well, we should have this conference where we talk about how religious people should be OK with the Higgs boson."

B: Mm-hmm.

R: So, those are the good intentions that I'm assuming are behind this conference that has speakers such as this. The quotes in here are pretty fun, and none of them have any amount of intelligence to them. Steve, you're the one who brought this one to my attention here –

S: Yes.

R: I'm interested in what – we've talked a little bit before about things like the Templeton Foundation, which is an organization that gives out a prize – gives out prizes to people who can explore science in a religious context, basically. And I'm a bit opposed to it. I feel like it's muddying the waters. I think we don't ''need'' to bring religion into what people are doing at CERN.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I think those two things are happily separated, but I'm interested in knowing your feelings on this.

S: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think trying to introduce theology into science is misguided. You know, this conference was specifically about the origin of the universe. So, it's not just about scientific issues in particular. I think the thinking, at least on the part of the theologians who were quoted about this conference, is that, well, you're talking about the origin of the universe. That's a really big question, and religion is about answering the really big questions—not science. Science is narrow and reductionist, and makes stuff, but can't really grapple with the big questions of our origins. And that's exactly incorrect, as you were saying. That's a complete knock to science. I mean, science is, in fact, the only human intellectual endeavor that ''can'' answer any empirical question about the origin of the universe.

R: Yeah.

J: So, was the conference, though, the scientists trying to appease religious people? The saying that –

R: Well, you know, apparently, this was – the conference was done on the part of CERN, according to BBC, and that's what I find troubling. I'm totally OK with a conference that religious people host, you know, and the topic might be "How do we –" you know, "How do we consider our theology now that we know ''X'', ''Y'', and ''Z''—now that science has discovered this? What does that mean for ''our'' belief system?" And I think that's fine, but, you know, apparently, the theologians who were there seem to think that this was a chance to ''debate'' the scientists –

J: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

R: – and, no! Why would you do that? Debate is completely the opposite direction of where you want to go.

S: It also – I mean, the quotes seem to me like a desperate grasp at relevance, trying to make it seem like they're – you know, that theology is still relevant to questions about origins of the universe, when, in fact, science has completely displaced it from that endeavor.

J: So, did it end up with, like, a fistfight? Like, what happened?

(''laughter'')

E: Science won.

R: I haven't found any evidence of any arrests, so, apparently –

S: There were no fisticuffs?

J: That really must've been awkward as hell, though, right? Like, they're like, sitting there, like, after a whole day, and they're like, "Uh, OK, it's over now."

E: Something tells me they're not going to be doing this again. They're going to learn from this.

S: I don't know.

R: Well, I mean, it's actually not even – like, I wish it had been that exciting. But, instead, it just seems like it was really ''boring'' –

E: Yeah.

R: – and nobody came to ''any'' conclusions. Because you ''can't'', you know?

S: Yeah.

R: You're just having a discussion of, like, well, you know, "But what don't we know?"

=== Italian Earthquake Scientists Convicted (14:57)===
* [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/22/us-italy-earthquake-court-idUSBRE89L13V20121022 Italian scientists convicted over earthquake warning]

S: Now, we're trying to keep – we like to keep our live shows really light –

(''laughter'')

E: So far, so good.

S: So, we thought we'd talk about a horrible earthquake that killed over three hundred people.

E: Yeah, let's go there.

R: Good intro. Good intro there.

S: But there's actually a better story embedded in that. There were six Italian scientists, who were recently convicted of manslaughter –

B: Yeah.

S: – for failure to properly communicate the warnings about the upcoming L'Aquila earthquake in 2009. Yeah, we've been following this story, you know, since it happened. The quick version is that there were a number of small tremors in this very earthquake-prone part of Italy, and the geologists—the local geologists—you know, were following it. And their opinion was that, well, these tremors are very common. Most such tremors are not followed by major quakes. Most major quakes are not preceded by these kinds of tremors. So, the probability of a major quake occurring is not particularly higher, you know, now, just because of these tremors, than at any time, and, therefore, there's no cause for alarm. Now, they were specifically asked during a press conference, "Should we panic?" You know, "Should we evacuate?" And they said "No. There's no reason to evacuate. Stay at home and drink a glass of wine."

B: Steve, was this about a year ago that we covered this?

S: 2009. 2009 –

B: Oh, wow. (''inaudible'')

S: – so, was the quake, and then the court trial started about a year ago, and now the decision came down that the six scientists were convicted to six years – I think six years in prison and something like, you know, millions of dollars in damages for manslaughter—for the deaths of the people who didn't evacuate because they – of their reassurances that there was nothing to be worried about.

R: That's horrific.

J: Well, i, you know, to play devil's advocate real quick, if there was true negligence—like, if they didn't follow through with things that they needed to do, if they did a terrible job at analyzing the data, in a fashion that – where the data could have been analyzed better, or they actually weren't asking their peers for the information—i can understand if there was extreme negligence.

S: Right.

J: But, even still, like, that's very hard to prove, and I just don't understand –

S: Well, I mean, not really. The question is, was their opinion within the standard for their profession? That's—in my opinion—that's the only real question here. You can't be blamed for being wrong, right? You can't be blamed for a bad outcome if you were following the standard. Now, of course, scientists can't predict earthquakes. You can't predict when an earthquake is going to occur. That's the bottom line. What – every statement they said was truthful, you know, every factual statement. "These tremors do not necessarily mean that there's an earthquake coming, and they are not a reason to evacuate. We don't evacuate every city where there's tremors because there might be a major quake, because it's not that predictive." So, that was not negligent. No, and they weren't really being accused of negligence. They were basically being accused of poorly communicating to the public. It seems to be based on a lot of false premises about what scientists ''can know''—what an expert about, you know, an earthquake, a geologist, expert ''can know''.

R: Yeah, they've been convicted for not using a magical power they don't have.

S: Yeah.

R: They might as well have convicted all the psychics in Italy for not accurately predicting this earthquake.

J: I think we need to be careful—i don't disagree, of course. I don't think that these men should be going to jail for this at all—but it is an important thing to state that, I think, people should go to prison, or get in trouble ''legally'', if they are misrepresenting science or – right? So you see where I'm going with this.

S: Well, yeah. If you are –

J: If you're setting that premise—you're saying, "Hey, these guys screwed up, they didn't do what they were supposed to do, they didn't communicate to us the real possible outcomes here", whatever—and, like –

S: Yeah.

J: – I'll reiterate, I don't think that they should be going to jail—

B: Well, I don't agree –

J: —but, I do think, though, that that standard that that court set needs to be applied all the way down the ladder.

B: Yeah, but, Jay, like, someone saying that "I have a cure for cancer and it's scientifically proven" but it's a sham?

J: Exactly, right? So, if they're going to actually take those scientists out and say "You're done. You're not performing science anymore and you're going to jail for that bad decision or information you gave", well, hello! Then, you know, all of a sudden, a million lawsuits need to be filed.

S: But, it wasn't – to clarify, though, it wasn't ''bad'', it was just ''unlucky''. I mean, doctors encounter this all the time, you know. You are asked to decide, you know, what tests to order, what diagnoses a patient might have. There's a whole lot of liability involved with that. You can't be convicted of malpractice just because of a bad outcome if what you did was within the standard of care.

B: Right.

S: So, was the information they were giving to the public within the standard for the profession? If the answer is "yes", the fact that there was a low-probability earthquake the next week is not their fault.

E: Right.

S: It doesn't change the fact – you know, if they're saying there's a 99% chance that there's not going to be an earthquake, and then the 1% thing happens, they were still right –

J: Yeah.

S: – in saying that it was unlikely.

R: Yeah.

E: Didn't the evidence show, basically, that they performed correctly, essentially? They did not –

S: That's the consensus. I mean, so, there's worldwide outrage, especially among the scientific community (''inaudible'') –

B: This has got to be shot down in a higher court.

S: Yeah.

B: This can't – can't possibly stand.

E: I hope so.

S: Well, there's two appeals left. There's two appeals, and they will stay out of prison before those appeals. So, the United States National Academy of Science, the Royal Academy of Science—the Royal Society, rather—issued a joint statement saying that "that is why we must protest the verdict in Italy. If it becomes a precedent in law, it could lead to a situation in which scientists will be afraid to give expert opinion."

J: Yeah, that's devastating.

E: Mm-hmm.

S: So, it would have a chilling effect. What – you know, what geologist is going to, you know, talk to the public in Italy now, if you could wind up in jail and, you know, financially devastated, and your career devastated, because you can't predict the future, you know, because you don't have a crystal ball? It's insane. It's insane.

J: Yeah. To think that they're going after these scientists, and they're not going after the rampant quackery throughout –

S: Well, there's that, too.

E: I wonder how much pressure they came under from, like, the families, the survivors, of this terrible, terrible devastation –

J: Oh yeah, they had to hang someone.

E: – and I imagine they put a lot of pressure on politicians and other people in order to hold ''somebody'' accountable.

J: They have to. They had to send someone down the river for that.

B: Did they have a trial?

S: Yeah.

B: Did they have witnesses and experts coming in?

S: Yeah. Yep.

B: I'd love to know the details of what exactly happened, because how could –

(''laughter'')

S: So, we'll see if the worldwide backlash has an effect. I mean, again, they do have two appeals left, so we'll definitely follow it.

=== Whale Makes Human Sounds (21:35)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20026938 Beluga whale 'makes human-like sounds']

S: All right, Rebecca, so, we have a cute animal –

R: Thank you.

S: – we're going to talk about now.

J: This is a happy one!

R: Just tell me this narwhal or whatever is alive.

S: It's a whale.

E: It's alive and well.

S: It's a beluga whale.

B: It sort of looks like a narwhal.

R: Tell me this beluga is alive!

E: That's NOC the beluga. They're very much alive.

R: It's not a beluga?

E: "NOC". N-O-C.

S: "NOC". NOC the beluga.

R: Oh! "That's NOC."

(''laughter'')

R: I was about to say, "No, ''that is a beluga''."

S: Sounds like a children's song.

E: It does sound like a children's –

S: Evan, sing it.

E: No.

S: OK.

J: Don't change it! Please don't –

E: If my daughter was here, maybe. But, no. So, what's important about NOC the beluga? Well, OK, so, picture this: You are part of the National Marine Mammal Foundation, OK, and you're in the tank, swimming around with the whales and stuff, and, all of a sudden, you hear somebody—you hear a voice—call your name. Something to the effect that – "Get out of the water! Get out of the water!" So, you're in the tank and you come up and you say, "OK, who told me to get out of the water? Who told me to get out of the water?" And the other scientists and people are looking around you like, "Nobody? What the heck are you talking about?" And, he's like, "Well, I definitely ''heard'' that!" Well, what did he actually hear? Well, apparently, NOC the beluga made some noises very reminiscent of human noises. Beluga whales are, you know, incredible creatures. Their calls – They're known as the canaries of the sea. They have a very high-frequency, high-pitched tone to their noises that they make, but they make lots of different kinds of noises. They can emit up to eleven different kinds of sounds—crackles, whistles, trills, squawks—all sorts of things. But, it's been rumored that these whales can emit noises that sound like humans talking. And, for the first time, they've actually recorded NOC the whale making these noises, and they have it on tape. And we have it on tape.

R: Nah.

(''NOC makes unnervingly human-sounding noises'')

R: Did he maybe just swallow a kazoo?

(''laughter'')

J: Everybody has a drunk neighbor that makes those noises.

(''laughter'')

E: Oh, gosh. Who knows what the heck he was saying? You know, dolphins have been taught to mimic noises that kind of sound like human voices, but, before this, there's been no record of an animal ''spontaneously'' coming up and making these kinds of noises. This is the first evidence, the first hard evidence we have of it.

R: Here's – I have a theory. I have a theory. I have a theory that – so, whales, in general, are incredibly intelligent –

E: Oh yeah.

R: – possibly as smart as us, but they don't want thumbs, or any way to talk to us –

E: Or fire.

R: – and I feel like they do, basically – That's true. No, I saw Spongebob once. There was fire under the sea. I think it can be done.

S: Yep, but they don't have nanotechnology, though.

R: They don't. So, my theory is that whales are basically, like – they have – it's like they have locked-in syndrome, you know? Where they're just –

J: Oh, no.

R: – super-intelligent, and there's all these people around them, and they're just messing with them –

J: So, he was screaming, actually –

R: Yeah! And, so, he's been like, his whole life, he's been in this stupid little – like, he's in captivity, right? So, he's been in this stupid little aquarium, and he's just, like, "I hate all of you! And I'm going to will myself to tell you, because you're too stupid to understand!"

E: So, basically, what's going on here is, the whale has learned to change – rapidly change pressure within its naval cavity in order to create these sounds. And, it hasn't – the whale is able to over-inflate what's known as its vestibular sac in its blowhole, which is normally acts to stop water from basically coming in. So, the whale is going through a lot of, you know, effort, essentially, to try to make these noises. And I'm sure they're going to be trying to figure out exactly, you know, basically, ''why'' is the whale doing this?

S: Well, he just – this whale was – did spend his life in captivity –

E: Yeah.

S: – so, he did hear human speech a lot, and maybe he's just, to some extent, mimicking the sounds that he grew up hearing his whole life.

J: It's definitely – it definitely has a human sound to it, in the cadence and everything.

S: Yeah.

J: I mean, he's intelligent enough to mimic a human, which is really cool.

R: Yeah.

J: And, then, you always think, you know, if he can mimic a human—if his brain is advanced that much—you know, maybe he –

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But, is he mimicking humans or making fun of humans? You know, like people make fun of other languages?

R: Yeah, he's just like "Weh! Weh! Weh! This is what you sound like!"

E: Yeah. You stupid bald monkey and (''inaudible'')! Get out of here!

B: Sounds like a false dichotomy.

=== PANDAS Controversy (26:18)===
* [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/a-pandas-story/ A PANDAS Story]

S: So, we're going to talk about – going from talking about beluga whales to talking about PANDAS! Except, we're not talking about pandas, because we're talking about –

E: Wait.

R: Stop toying with my emotions, Steve!

S: I had to put a cute picture of a panda up there for you, Rebecca. We are talking about pediatric autoimmune –

R: It makes sense.

S: – neuropsychiatric disorder associated with –

E: I didn't know PANDA was an acronym. Cool!

R: Steve, I miss the panda.

S: – streptococcal infection—or, PANDAS. See? There's a panda.

(''laughter, cooing'')

E: Aww!

R: Yay.

S: We're talking about PANDAS –

E: Aww.

R: Boo.

J: Oh.

E: That's worse.

S: – which is a legitimately controversial medical diagnosis! So, essentially, what happens is, children suddenly develop ticks—like Tourette syndrome—and psychiatric disorders—obsessive–compulsive disorder—and it is thought that, in some cases, that it is actually – the inciting event is an infection—bacteria—streptococcal infection. Now, of course, it's always difficult to establish the reality of a new disease. Unless you get all your ducks in a row, and all the, you know, pathology all adds up, it's sometimes difficult to identify a legitimate new syndrome and to prove that – cause and effect. So, correlation is one thing. As we know, correlation is not ''necessarily'' causation. And, so, the syndrome exists. There are – the number of physicians who have identified the sudden onset psychiatric – neuropsychiatric disorder, and in some cases it is temporally associated with a streptococcal infection. But that's not the same thing as saying that the strep infection ''caused'' the neuropsychiatric syndrome. So, that's – and there's the controversy. Now, of course, we live in the modern Internet age. So, as soon as a scientist says, "I think that there's this syndrome—I want to call it PANDAS—and – sort of, you know, a psychiatric syndrome provoked by a bacterial infection", of course, there are now support groups, and there's groups on the Internet, and there's patient groups supporting this diagnosis before the science is even settled. And, then, of course, once that happens, when you try to do more science, or have any kind of discussion about whether or not this is a real syndrome, you have parents and patient groups and advocacy groups, you know, calling you all kinds of nasty names and saying there's a conspiracy against people with PANDAS, it's all the insurance companies and Big Pharma and evil doctors or whatever. So, that's the situation that we're in the middle of right now, unfortunately, is that, before the science is settled, you know, there's the scientific controversy, then there's the public controversy. This came to the media attention recently because of a 16-year-old girl called Elizabeth Wray. She developed, you know, a syndrome like PANDAS with ticks and psychological disorders, was diagnosed by a physician with PANDAS, and then was transferred to Boston's Children's Hospital for – presumably for further treatment of PANDAS. Now, the story that is going around the PANDAS community is that once she got to Boston University—or Boston Children's Hospital—she was told – the parents were told, "We don't believe that PANDAS is real – that it exists", and then they essentially admitted their daughter to the psychiatric unit and started treating her with psychiatric medications. Now, I don't know if that's true, because the doctors and the hospital are not telling their side of the story because of patient confidentiality. So, we don't know what their side of the story is. We only know the parents' side of the story, filtered through the PANDAS community. Unfortunately, now there's – this story has taken on a life of its own. There's a Free Elizabeth Wray movement going on within the PANDAS community, they're telling all kinds of horror stories about Boston Children's Hospital, and, you know, we can't verify any of it. What's interesting in reading about it is that each side has their narrative—and I wrote about this on Science-Based Medicine—because one of the things that – the ideas that we're wrestling with in the skeptical community is that—well, all right, we have, I think, a good approach to critical thinking, we understand a lot about self-deception, about the nature of science and pseudoscience—but we don't always have a good story to tell the public, or we have a hard time convincing mainstream outlets that we have – that our story is an interesting and good one. You know, we have to really market our narrative—the skeptical narrative. When you read about stories like this, the PANDAS proponents have a really compelling emotional narrative. It may be total B.S.—i don't know—but it's very compelling. They have a story of a child suffering from an unusual disease, parents who just want to do what's right for her—I believe all those things are correct—and then they are, essentially, being abused by a dismissive and skeptical medical establishment who doesn't believe in this disease, and that is treating their child with perhaps harmful, you know, psychiatric medications. They even – this went to court. Apparently, the hospital thought that the parents were being negligent in not allowing them to give proper standard of care—psychiatric treatment—to their child, and they wanted to have custody taken away from the parents, and they wanted to admit Elizabeth to a locked psychiatric ward—again, not sure – I can't verify those from the hospital's side of things. A judge – a Massachusetts judge essentially made her a ward of the state while they sorted out what was going on, but they did not grant the hospital their request to treat her in the way that they wanted to. So, they essentially just – the state took her out of everybody's hands for a moment – for the moment. So, it's interesting. Of course, the PANDAS community, again, is up in arms, you know. The court essentially took custody away from these parents that are only trying to do what's right for their daughter. But, of course, you could see the other narrative—you know, let's assume that the physicians think that—even if you think – whether or not you think PANDAS really exists—they think that she has a psychiatric illness, the parents are in denial, they're pursuing this false diagnosis, and they're, you know, refusing standard medical care. That's a story, too.

B: What if you just pulled out the whole strep association, and just treat it like a "pandisorder"? Is their beef that it's associated with strep, and they don't think there's any association? Why don't they just treat it like a neuropsychiatric disorder –

S: Yeah.

B: – and forget about the whole strep association?

S: Well, because the strep association would lead you to treat with things like antibiotics. So, that's the question: Should you treat it with antibiotics, or should you treat her like a psychiatric (''inaudible'') patient?

J: Why not both? I mean, why wouldn't you –

S: Well, she has had at least one round of antibiotics. You can also treat it like an autoimmune disease, with, like, intravenous globulin, for example. So, I mean, these are real medical questions. Do we treat it like an infection, do we treat it like a post-infectious auto-immune disease, or do we treat it like a psychiatric disorder? Those are real questions.

J: Steve, are you saying pandas don't exist? Let me just get this straight.

(''laughter'')

S: So, well, I did – to give a serious answer to your sarcastic question, I did –

R: My favorite kind.

S: – take the opportunity – I'm good that way. I'm good that way. I did take the opportunity just to familiarize myself with the PANDAS literature—again, I always emphasize, I'm no an expert in this, but I can read the literature and give my opinion like a science journalist—i think it's genuinely controversial. When I read the research, there's lots of – the ducks are not in a row. So, when you do things like treat kids who apparently have PANDAS with antibiotics in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, they don't necessarily improve. And, if you look for the antibodies that are supposed to be there, they don't necessarily correlate with the disease onset or with the existence of strep. So –

B: So, this is clearly not like autism and vaccines. It's just more complicated than that.

S: So, no. So, right. So, autism and vaccines, like, I would say, that's been studied enough to say that autism's – that autism is not caused by vaccines. We can say that. We can make the negative statement. I cannot make the negative statement that PANDAS does not exist, only that the research so far has not reached the threshold where we can agree that it does exist and that there is some actual negative data—there's some positive data, too—so it's legitimately controversial. It did remind me, though, of the chronic Lyme disease controversy—

R: Yeah.

S: —which is very common in New England—again, where they think that a number of symptoms, including neurological symptoms, can be caused by a bacterial infection and treated with antibiotics. And the same – there's a lot of overlap in those two communities, you know.

J: Steve, are you saying that the public has unrealistic expectations?

S: Well, I think – it's partly that. I mean, I think the public is uncomfortable with the uncertainty, and they like this sort of hero–villain narrative, so they paint the medical community as the villains, and—except for those maverick physicians who understand. They're Lyme-literate, or they understand PANDAS, so they're the heroes—and, then, the insurance companies don't want to pay for, you know, over-and-over recurrent courses of IV antibiotics, so they're the villains, you know. They're not—I'm not defending insurance companies, but sometimes they actually – sometimes they're right. They don't want to pay for things that are not science-based or evidence-based. So, it's complicated. And, you know, how do we – so, how do we deal with a child with this disorder when we don't know what the best scientific answer is—we don't know if it's autoimmune, infectious, or psychiatric? We just have to, you know, do the best we can—and there may be different physicians who would take different approaches—but to portray it as "PANDAS definitely exists. If you don't believe in it, you're dismissive and you're mean and evil, or you're protecting some kind of Big Pharma grant that you're getting"—they always bring that up—rather than saying, "You know, we really want to know the right answer, but we just haven't found it yet. It's still – it's legitimately controversial."

J: Yeah, I think what you're saying does confirm what I was thinking, is that the public wants an answer, science is not yet done figuring this one out, and –

S: Yeah. Like the earthquake one, right?

J: Yeah.

S: Sometimes the answer is, "We don't know yet", you know. "We need to do more research". In medicine, we have to make decisions with imperfect, you know, information, so, you know.

J: Wouldn't it be typical, too – like, let's say that this is happening over and over again –

S: Yeah.

J: – like, at some point, some doctors are going to come up with different ideas, they're going to try it out, you know. The trial-and-error process happens, and—i hate to say it, but—this girl is probably going to be one of the people that gets tested on with new ideas.

S: Well, I mean – well, if you're really testing then you should be doing a research protocol. If you're just applying the best knowledge that we have to an individual patient, that's – a certain amount of trial and error with that that's not really experimentation. So, there is a difference there. So, I don't know. The other interesting question that I'm kind of alluding to is, what role do the patient or the advocacy groups play? I think, a lot of times, that they are helpful in raising awareness for a disease or a disorder and raising funding, and advocating for patients. You know, I've seen, I think, there's a lot of very effective, very good patient advocacy groups out there. But, sometimes, they put their nickel down on a specific scientific answer, and that's not their job.

J: Yeah.

S: It's not their job to predict or demand that science give them the answer they want. And, you know, unfortunately, some people want the answer to be "an infection"—not "genes", not, you know, "We don't know".

J: Yeah. It's curable. That's the one they want.

S: Of course, who – that's the answer I would want to have! "It's something outside that is, you know, foreign, that can be cured, and that can reverse my child to the way that they were". Who – every parent wants that to be the answer, but sometimes you – you know, you have to step back from what you want and listen to the evidence. That's the – that's the scientist's, that's the physician's job, you know. You should just let them do their job, you know.

J: All right, so, I want to bring up a quick side point on this.

S: Yeah.

J: So, as an example, let's say, fifty years ago, let's say this was happening. What stance do you think the public would have differently than what we're seeing today?

S: It's the same, and this ''did'' happen fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, you know, she would be diagnosed with neurosyphilis—maybe not somebody who was sixteen, but that was the stand-in for what we now would, you know, the same subculture would diagnose with chronic Lyme. There were believers in that. There were physicians who believed in treatments like chelation therapy, you know, and science proved it wrong, and they said, "Well, we don't care, we're going to still do it. We're going to come up with – We're just going to keep coming up with special pleading and alternate theories, and form our own societies and our own – and just keep doing it, and say that it's all a conspiracy."

J: Mm-hmm.

S: So, but, I think that it's just the turnaround time is so much faster because of the Internet. Like, another example: CCSVI, right? The alleged blockage in the veins that drained blood from the brain, causing multiple sclerosis. It's that – that whole process—of Dr. Zamboni proposing this entity and a treatment, to it being researched, to it being refuted, to, you know, patient advocacy groups springing up and calling for conspiracies and calling for research and demanding that science give them the answer that they want—all has taken place within a few years. We've seen that cycle happen right before our eyes. So, the Internet is just making it happen a lot quicker and a lot bigger, I think. But it's always been this way.

J: So do you have any ideas on what we could do? Could the skeptical community do anything to help this (''inaudible'')?

S: Well, I think what we do is, we discuss the issue from a science, logical, critical thinking point of view, you know. We point out the role of science in this, and we, I think, we try to bring the public discourse to a level that can deal with it in a more productive way, rather than the conspiracy mongering, sort of lowest-common-denominator that it would otherwise sink to.

J: Yeah.

=== Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44)===
* pnd

S: Well, let's move on. Jay, we're talking about how the media presents stories about paranormal activities.

J: Yeah, this is interesting. So, a professor decided to—Professor Brewer decided that—because what we're seeing over the years is a very obvious interest, in the general public, to news articles, and to TV shows, that talk about ghosts—and, you know, we've all seen the ''Ghost Hunter'' TV show—and, to people like us, at best, we watch it, and it's fun, right? 'Cause it's ridiculous and entertaining, and we like to see people from our perspective—a skeptical perspective—they're acting foolishly. But, there are a lot of people that are watching this, and they're riveted. Like, they really love it and they think a lot of it's real—and, I'm sure, to a certain degree, I can't say everyone that watches it and thinks everything about it is real—but, in the end, there's a huge entertainment factor there, and, unfortunately, to us skeptics, we feel like there's a lot of people that simply believe it, and that's their favorite entertainment. And I know a lot of people—I'm friends with a lot of people—that literally have active discussions on Facebook all the time, that I dip into, that are talking about the latest TAPS show. It would be be, "Can you believe it?" and "I knew that place was haunted!", and they're like, you know, getting whooped up.

S: I don't get it. I just don't get it. Nothing happens!

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

R: That's not true! That's not true.

E: Like "Seinfeld", yeah.

S: But, I mean, but they never find a ghost.

R: Steve, Steve. Did you feel that?

(''laughter'')

R: That happens! That happens all the time.

(''applause'')

R: They feel so much.

J: The thing is, you know –

S: I want to see a [http://www.hark.com/clips/pnzwffccqk-10-people-witnessed-a-free-floating-full-torso-vaporous-apparition full, floating torso] drift across the camera lens. Then I'll be impressed.

B: I still won't believe it. (''inaudible'')

S: No, but at least it'll be entertaining.

J: A lot of the shows, though, they're all right on the cusp, you know, of the noise, right? They're always right on that cusp. They're always ''just'' seeing something, or something falls over, you know? Or there's a noise from upstairs, or whatever, and it's never – they never give you that, you know? You don't get that –

R: This, actually – this came up—tomorrow I'll be talking about the [http://paranormalroadtrip.org/ paranormal road trip] that I just went on with [http://www.jonronson.com/ Jon Ronson] and [http://richardwiseman.wordpress.com/ Richard Wiseman] that got us here—and, at one of the stops, we were at a – we did talk to someone in a "haunted museum", and she was telling us that "the ghost hunters were there, and it was very exciting because there was a noise in the attic, and there were steps (''step sounds'') even though nobody was up there, and so the ghost hunter ran over and climbed up the ladder and looked into the attic, and, just then, a lady, dressed all in white, came ''flying at him'', and he shrieked in horror and fell down the ladder, and it was all really dramatic", and we were just completely blown away, obviously. We were riveted –

E: Yeah, well.

R: – and we said, "We cannot ''wait'' to see that footage!"

(''groans'')

R: – and she said, "Actually, I mean, it was so good, they didn't actually get that on camera.

B: Darn it!

R: No, all the cameras were down in another room somewhere."

J: Yeah, of course.

E: Well.

S: That was like –

R: "There's literally no evidence of it", though. Yeah.

S: – Ed Warren. We were investigating Ed Warren. He told us this story of being in a haunted house, and they had a local news crew over there, and, like, for two hours, they videotaped things flying around the room, you know, like, I say, really impressive, you know, smoking-gun evidence of paranormal activity. We're like, "Great! Can we see that footage?"

E: Sure!

J: "Yeah!"

S: "You know what? They taped over it for the news segment later that night."

(''laughter'')

S: Go figure. Stupid news crew.

J: So, I – I'm going to ask a couple of questions that I want you guys to not answer right now, but just think about it, 'cause these are pretty obvious questions, but I think they're interesting. "Why do people believe, or like to believe, in the paranormal? What's the attraction?" It's an interesting question if you think about it. There are people that ''really'' seek it out and love it. And there's something exciting about it. There's something kind of visceral about it. To my mind—to a skeptical mind—I don't have a connection to it. I just don't see what that allure is, other than, maybe—because I do like horror movies, and I do like to get scared. I love being actually scared sitting in a movie theater. It doesn't happen that often, but when it does happen it's very thrilling—and, maybe they're just having a lot of those thrilling moments. It's easier for them to get scared.

R: But, also, I mean, don't you think, maybe, it's got something to do with the fact that, maybe, we're not going to rot in the ground and die and never see our loved ones again...? Maybe?

J: Maybe? It's – you know, I'm not going to say no, but when I think about it, there's something thrilling about it. I'm not thinking, as I'm being thrilled in a horror movie, "Oh, I'm defying death by being thrilled right now!" That's not happening. I'm just – there is something – it's like, you know, eating something really spicy that hurts.

S: Yeah, but to –

J: It hurts, but it's good at the same time, right?

E: Uh.

S: To a lot of people, definitely, you know, evidence of ghosts is evidence of the afterlife. That's the appeal.

R: Yeah, and when we talk to people who describe their own experiences often—they're talking about Grandma and Grandpa and whatnot coming back to them and telling them that it's all OK—you know, and they're very comforting messages –

E: Yeah, which is why –

S: They want a narrative.

E: Which is why they watch these shows. It reinforces these positions that these people have, you know, and they derive a certain, you know, need out of it.

J: I wonder, though, because those shows are ''so bad''! They're so bad. Can they really be, you know?

R: I mean, there's a lot of – No, no, no! Personally, I would derive a lot of happiness from knowing that my dearly beloved grandmother, who I adored when I was young—she died when I was young—I would get so much happiness knowing that she was just screwing around with asshole ghosthunters on TV. Just, like, brushing past them and then disappearing whenever the cameras come out you know? That would give me a lot of satisfaction, knowing that.

J: Well, maybe the skeptical version of it is watching a YouTube video of Hitchens just tearing some moron apart, right? That's our version of that?

E: That releases endorphins, yeah.

J: 'Cause that makes me believe in something, right?

E: Yeah.

J: It gives me a thrill, but – OK, anyways. So, there is an article we're talking about here. So, Dr. Paul Brewer, who is – teaches at the University of Deleware, developed a study that was recently published in the journal ''Science: Communication'' that examines the influence of the media on the public's perception of the paranormal. So, here is his test: He took four news articles that were similar to each other, but they had significant differences in some of the details. The essence of it was, he had an article on one end of the spectrum that described a paranormal effect with a paranormal investigator, and they were using instruments to measure things, or whatever. And, then, as you go down to the fourth article, the fourth article gets very descriptive about using, you know, faux scientific language to make the paranormal investigators sound scientifically-minded, and using scientific tools. And, what he found was, the more of the faux science that was in the article, the more that the people believed that the paranormal accounts were true. You know, it's kind of a kick in the gut for us skeptics, because—and for us scientists, because—they're using our lingo, and our vernacular, and the way that we go about presenting data, and they're fooling people with it—because, I think, the general public is trained to a certain degree to recognize scientific language and recognize the formality of science—and they're using that—and I don't know how deliberate it is. Maybe they figured it out for the TV shows, that, you know, "hey, the more we B.S. this, the more we make this meter look cool and we throw in, you know, technical jargon, the more people that are going to be interested in our TV show"—

B: I think they also believe it themselves, Jay. They think they're being scientific.

J: Yeah.

E: That's right, yeah.

B: That's a big part of it as well.

E: You bet they do.

J: So, Brewer said it wasn't just any story about paranormal investigators that made people believe in ghosts and haunted houses. It was a story about how they were scientific. So, he puts a big emphasis on the science there. And, the good news was that he said that they might look at this and say, "Well, all it takes is this sprinkle of some acronyms in there, and wave around a cool-looking thing that beeps, and suddenly people believe in ghosts and haunted houses." Now, the one cool thing about his research was, he also found that if, at the end of the article, there was a skeptical disclaimer that said "This is the skeptical perspective. This is why that investigation was wrong. This is the mistakes that they made and this is why these instruments are bogus."—if they threw that in there—it actually made the people believe in the claims a lot less.

R: What?

J: Yeah, it actually worked.

R: The thing that we're always complaining about—that, like, one sentence that presents –

S: The token skeptic?

E: The token skeptic, yeah.

R: – the entirety of skeptical opinion—that actually does make a difference?

J: Well, I don't want to – I don't want to say that the token skeptic 30-second B.S. blurb that they cut on most of the TV shows that we see works. The way that he presented it, it seemed a little bit like it had more teeth. It wasn't a quick thing. I think it was a little bit more of a takedown.

S: So, there was a series of studies about ten years ago, where they looked at the same thing—at the presentation of pseudoscience in a documentary and its effect on people's belief in the subject matter, like belief in UFOs or alien visitation—and they found some similar things in that, when it was presented scientifically, that absolutely increased belief. They also found that if, at any point in time, it was said—there was any kind of disclaimer saying—the following claims are true, or that the following claims may or may not be true, or whatever—anything positive or negative—reduced belief, or reduced the increase in belief, following the segment. So, anything that triggered people's questioning about, is it true or is it not true, was actually a good thing. But they found the opposite in that the token skepticism at the end—a scientist coming in at the end and saying, you know, "We've evaluated this, and it's not true", ''increased'' belief in the thing, because it lent legitimacy to the whole enterprise—the very fact that a scientist was spending their time and giving their attention to it.

J: Oh, yeah.

S: So –

B: Is that a cultural change –

S: Well, maybe –

B: – or is it the study?

S: Well, all right. I don't know. I don't know what the answer to that is. But, one possible interpretation may be that the ''token'' ineffective skepticism actually has a negative effect in raising belief in the paranormal because it's lending false legitimacy, but if you give ''effective'', you know, analysis—

B: Yeah.

S: —effective skeptical analysis—maybe you could reverse that and bring it back down.

J: Yeah, from from what the article said, it was, I think, an equal paragraph on the skeptical perspective –

S: Yes.

J: – and, specifically –

S: We really do have to argue for equal time and for getting the skeptical position –

J: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

S: – not the talking head blurb token skepticism may not – may still be counterproductive.

J: And the thing that he said was that there was that the article, the paragraph, did a takedown of the people that were claiming to be scientists.

S: Mm-hmm.

J: So, it stripped their expertise away, in essence.

S: Yeah. Yeah.

J: So, you know, I think it's interesting. I think that we're hard-wired for these things. I find, unfortunately, more and more TV programs—hey, you guys noticing, what's with the reality TV? Like, why is reality TV taking over television? Have you asked yourself that question?

S: 'Cause it's cheap.

E: It's cheap.

S: It's cheap, yeah.

(''applause'')

== Live Q&A (51:06) ==
* Questions from the CSICon audience

S: OK, we do have a few minutes for some Q&A. If you want to ask us a question—you can ask us anything. We won't necessarily answer, but you can ask—

Q1: Rebecca, I hate to break this to you, but NOC the beluga died five years ago.

R: God damn it!

J: Aww.

(''groans'')

R: God damn it, Tim Farley!

J: Tim Farley!

Q2: On a more serious note, Jay, apropos of what you said, I'm waiting for the skeptics community to have some reaction to the television show [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Island_Medium ''The Long Island Medium''] –

J: Oh.

S: Yeah.

Q2: – especially when she has kids on the program and she's telling them that, you know, she's talking to their dead parent.

J: Yeah, yeah. It's pathetic.

R: Oh. What a sick line.

S: I haven't brought myself to watch it yet. You know, I know it's out there. At some point, I think we probably should bite the bullet and then do an actual review, but I – the reports that I heard are, as you say, really abusive –

E: Yeah.

S: – very exploitative, not just that it's totally gullible nonsense. It's really exploitative. Yep.

Q3: Love your podcast, listen a lot. Always wondered whose voice says, "And now it's time for Science or Fiction".

J: That's changed over the years. The –

S: The current voice is –

R: It's Izzy.

S: – Izzy. Izzy.

J: Izzy Lawrence, yeah.

R: Izzy Lawrence. She has a podcast called [http://sundayssupplement.blogspot.com/ "Sundays Supplement"]. She's a skeptic and a stand-up comedian in England (''inaudible'').

S: So that's a genuine British accent, unlike some of the previous people who have said this.

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

S: Yes?

Q4: Yeah, with this – the Italian decision about the geologists and the – not predicting the volcano—or the earthquakes—there could – there's, like, a silver lining here. This could be a boon to the insurance industry, because maybe geologists and seismologists need to take out malpractice insurance.

J: Mm-hmm.

R: That's your "silver lining"? The insurance companies? Like, "Well, with all of this, I was really worried about the HMOs, but it looks like I'll be all right."

Q5: All right. Hi, guys! I love the podcast and I love everything you guys do. I'm –

S: Really? Everything we do? You don't know half the stuff that we do.

J: Yeah!

R: You don't want to know.

Q5: Certainly everything I'm aware that you guys do –

S: Oh, OK.

Q5: – and assume you do, which is really (''inaudible'')

S: Good caveat.

J: He hasn't seen [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1X1FOZmmVA "Occ: The Skeptical Caveman"] yet, so –

Q5: Oh, I certainly have!

J: Oh, and you like it?

Q5: Yeah, it's really good stuff!

R: Don't sound so surprised, Jay.

J: Just kidding.

Q5: Anyway. I'm a teaching assistant, and I help teach a lot of science courses—a lot of basic science courses—and we teach the scientific method—and most people understand the scientific method—but there's this other part that never gets explicitly put in there, like, this honesty and integrity built into it, like you need to make sure that the effect that you're trying to explain is really there, and that kind of stuff. Have you guys come up with a really good way to explain that part of science to people?

S: You mean that you just have to be ethical? Or you have to really care about the truth, I guess, is what you're saying?

Q5: Yes.

S: Yeah. I mean, I think—you're right, that is sort of implicit in the scientific process, that, you know, you're trying to find the actual answer, not just work backwards to the answer that you want to have—so, I think that's also implicit in scientific skepticism. I mean, that's part of – you know, one of our core values is, we want to know what's really ''really'' true, not just what ''seems'' to be true, and sometimes you have to dig really, really hard, and you have to be skeptical of your own conclusions. I mean, that ''is'' skepticism, I think, what you're saying. So, I think – combine that with the scientific method and you have scientific skepticism.

J: Yeah, but I think he was asking more about teaching the idea that you – we want to know the truth and be passionate about the truth –

S: Yeah.

J: – and I – it's a hard thing to teach, I think. I think that, you know, we're all kind of freakish in the idea that we're into skepticism. It's – it is something that you could teach your kids, absolutely. But, you know, how do you teach an adult to get into the truth, and get rid of all the garbage that's in their heads? It's hard, as, you know, as people get older, it's hard for them to learn that, I think. But I do agree with you. I think we need to inspire kids to—first off, teach them skepticism. Let's just start with that—I think that the caring will come with that.

== Science or Fiction (55:19) ==

S: "Science or Fiction". I'm going to read you three items—two are real, one is fiction—and then we'll poll the audience. We'll see which one you think is the fiction. So, here we go. [http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1112720858/astronauts-blood-pressure-low-gravity-102612/ Item number one]: "A new study finds that astronauts who spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% increased risk of heart attacks and strokes."

J: Whoa.

S: [http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/67117-first-feathered-dinosaurs-found-in-north-america Number two]: "Scientists have discovered the first feathered dinosaur in the western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers." And [http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S35/06/74S40/ item number three]: "Researchers find that, at the molecular level, evolutionary changes can be highly predictable." All right, so, let's start by polling the audience. Applaud for the one that you think is the ''fiction''. How many people here think that the one about astronauts and heart attacks is the fiction?

(''applause'')

S: OK. How many think the feathered dinosaur is the fiction?

(''very limited applause'')

S: OK.

E: Oh.

S: And how many think that the evolution-is-predictable is the fiction?

(''applause'')

S: OK. I think that was 3–1–2.

R: Hmm.

S: Let's start at this end, Evan. Why don't you tell us what you think?

E: OK –

S: And, I'd like to remind my co-hosts, this is a live show. Keep it quick.

E: "New study finds that astronauts who have spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% chance of – increased risk of heart attack and strokes." OK, so, hmm. What would be the trick here? "More than one month in microgravity. That is a long time, essentially, but 35%—I don't know. That seems like kind of a high number. A lot of things do happen to people in space—microgravity and so forth—and they do carefully study that and the effects on astronauts and so forth, so perhaps that one is true. Second one: "First feathered dinosaurs, western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers." I have no idea about that one. Not a clue. Not a clue. I'll jump to the third one. "Researchers find that, at the ''molecular level'', evolutionary changes can be highly predictable. At the molecular level. That's fascinating. Now, the audience said that that one was going to be most likely the fiction.

S: ''You're'' trying to convince ''them''.

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

E: Well, you know, I think they convinced me, more than I'm going to convince them, of that one, right? I think – at the molecular level. I don't see it. I just can't see it happening at that level. "Evolutionary change is highly predictable." There's a bit of a vagary there in regards to the highly predictable at that level. I'll say that that one is fiction. I agree with the audience.

S: OK. Rebecca?

R: Yeah, I found the audience's argument very convincing as well.

(''laughter'')

R: I have heard about health problems associated with low gravity—zero gravity—"35% increased" – it's the specifics that I'm not sure about. That doesn't seem ridiculous to me, that—35% increase, relatively speaking—i, you know, that doesn't sound too crazy to me. I feel like that could be – easily be science, knowing what I know about other health risks in zero gravity. I do think that there was recently a feathered dinosaur discovered. My problem here is that I believe it—I could be completely wrong about this—but I believe it was discovered in North America, and I do believe it was the first one in North America. Those are my thoughts. But, is that the first one in the western hemisphere? I don't know. So, now I'm trying to think, if there had been one discovered in South America before, because that's still the western hemisphere.

S: Last time I checked, yeah.

R: So, but, would you be that niggling? I'm not sure. And so that leaves us with the idea that evolutionary changes are highly –

S: "Predictable."

R: – predictable—thank you—on the molecular level. Yeah, that does seem way out there to me, 'cause it's written in such a way that makes me think that you have reversed that. But maybe that's what you're trying to make me think. So, for me, it's between the first and the third one, because—and, I should say that I question the first one simply because it doesn't seem out of the ordinary to me, and so you might be trying to, uh, to switch it up—''so I'm staring deep into your eyes, 'cause I don't normally get this chance''.

E: Yeah, it's like a poker read here, yeah.

R: This is like – yeah, this is like a game of poker.

E: Poker.

R: You just look bored.

(''audience'')

R: That's what I'm getting from you right now, is an intense feeling of –

S: What, are you trying to cold read me now?

R: – boredom. I'm seeing an "M".

J: (''in unison'') I'm seeing an "M".

E: I see the number "3".

R: "M – Murder you if you don't get me the answer." That's what I'm getting from you.

E: "M – Murder".

R: So I'm going to go with the audience. I'm going to say that the evolutionary change is –

S: Evolutionary predictable. OK.

R: Yeah.

S: Bob?

B: OK, live show. The astronaut one, number one. 35% seems high to me. I know there's some major issues for extended stays in microgravity. They've gotta exercise, like, hours a day just to maintain what – you know, some muscle tone. But a month doesn't seem long enough, and 35% seems a little bit too much. 'Cause, I know that, when they come back, yeah, things can be tough in 1''g'', but they get it back fairly quickly. So let's look at the other ones here. "First feathered dinosaur"? Yeah. Would it be the first? I know there – they discovered so many in China, but they could be the first one in the western hemisphere. "Another dinosaur group." You would think it would be another dinosaur group if it was the first in the western hemisphere. The third one? Yeah, this one's a little sketchy, but, I don't know, there could be some pattern – there could be some pattern that they detected at the molecular level. "Highly predictable." "Highly" is bothering me. It's – what do you mean by "highly"? Yeah, it's between one and three.

S: And, therefore....

B: And therefore, all right. I'm going to go with the microgravity. 35% just seems like too much.

S: OK.

E: Oooh.

R: It's all right. Hedge your bets.

J: Well, OK. Number two I have no reason to doubt—the one about the feathered dinosaurs. The one about the evolutionary changes can be highly predictable? I'm curious what you mean by "evolutionary changes". I mean, are you saying that they can predict—and I know you're not going to answer this, but I'm questioning—can they predict that a mutation is going to occur, or are they predicting what the evolutionary change is going to be? Am I crazy in asking that question?

S: No. I'm not going to answer it, but you can ask.

(''laughter'')

J: So, I think that they can predict that there's going to be a mutation. I don't think that they can predict what that mutation is going to be. And I think that that's vague, and I'm not going to take that one. I'm going to go with the one about the astronauts as being the fake for a couple of reasons: One, 35% does seem like an awful lot. I do think that that would mean that some heart – some astronauts would have had heart attacks, and I've never heard of an astronaut having a heart attack.

R: Really?

J: Have you?

R: I don't really look into it that much.

J: Well, there you go. That's it. I'm done.

S: All right. So, very quickly, let's see if they changed your mind. Who in the audience—again, applaud again—who thinks the astronauts is the fiction?

(''applause'')

R: Definitely more.

S: Feathered dinosaurs?

(''two or three people applaud'')

S: Thank you. And, evolution being predictable?

(''applause'')

E: Ooh.

J: We've had a major swing, Steve.

R: They split!

E: Might be a little (''inaudible'')

S: I think we swung them to number one!

R: Yeah.

S: But I can't convince anybody that this feathered dinosaur thing is fiction.

J: These two people here!

S: "Scientists have discovered the first feathered dinosaur –

R: You got these guys! What, are they (''inaudible'')

S: They're nobody.

(''laughter'')

S: – in the western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers." And that one is science.

(''groans'')

S: Sorry. I do appreciate it, but that was science.

J: Boring! Who cares?

R: So you guys do suck, though.

(''groans'')

R: No, I'm kidding! I'm kidding.

S: No, they were brave. They were willing to go out there and give it a chance.

J: Right, did you really even have to read that one? Just come on.

S: Imagine if they were right! All right –

E: Yeah, right?

S: – so, the scientist is Darla Zelenitsky. She discovered—and her team—an Ornithomimus dinosaur—which is in the group the ''ornithomimids'', and that is a group of theropods—and it is the first feathered dinosaur in that group, and it was discovered in Alberta, Canada, so it's the first western hemisphere feathered dinosaur. Found three specimens, an adult and two juveniles. The juveniles have just downy feathers all over their body. The adult has the downy feathers but also has, you know, mature feathers and some partially-developed wings. So, it seems like the adults developed these proto-wings, probably not having anything to do with flight –

B: Mating.

S: – something that adults do that children don't do. Maybe something to do with mating, for example. And remarkably well-preserved. So, it increases also the number of different kinds of sediments in which feathered dinosaurs – the evidence of feathers can be found. So it's the first one in the western hemisphere, first of this kind of fossil find, and the first ornithomimid with feathers. Very interesting finding. All right. Let's go on to – I guess we'll go to number one: "A new study finds that astronauts who have spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% increased risk of heart attacks and strokes." Bob and Jay think this is the fiction, and they convinced a lot of the audience, and this one is the fiction.

(''applause'')

S: All right.

J: Thank you.

R: Good job. Good job.

S: So, I made that up.

(''laughter'')

E: The whole thing?

S: The real news item that inspired that is only tangentially related. What the study found was the explanation—or an explanation—for why astronauts who spend time in microgravity develop a condition known as orthostatic hypotension. What that means is that when you go from, say, lying down to a sitting or a standing position, normally your blood vessels would contract, would raise your blood pressure, maintain your blood pressure so that you don't pass out, you don't get lightheaded. But if you have orthostatic hypotension then, upon standing, your vessels don't contract to compensate, your blood pressure drops –

B: You get lightheaded.

S: – profusion to the brain decreases, you can get lightheaded or even to the point of passing out. Astronauts develop this very commonly after a short stay in microgravity, and almost always if they've been in microgravity for a long time. The explanation for this is that spending time in microgravity impairs the ability of the vessels to contract, apparently because they don't have to, so they just sort of get lazy, and they – whatever feedback mechanism is there to tell those blood vessels to contract, you know, doesn't function for a while, and then, almost like the body has to relearn that reflex once they're back in gravity. So, didn't seem that surprising a finding, but that's what they found. All right, number three: "Researchers find that, at the molecular level, evolutionary changes can be highly predictable." And that one is science. That was definitely the ringer. What the scientists showed – they looked at different insect species, but in many different groups of insects—so, insects separated by three hundred million years of evolutionary history. Insects have been around for a long time—and what they found was that insects which eat a certain kind of plant that produces a certain kind of poison all evolved one of a very few number of possible molecular solutions to eating that poison, even though they were completely separated along different evolutionary paths. And what they said is, essentially, if there is a limited number of solutions to a problem at the molecular level, that one of those changes will occur in an evolutionary line is actually – becomes highly predictable, that you could predict that, even if they're completely separated evolutionarily on different branches, separated by hundreds of millions of years of evolution, they're going to evolve the exact same mutation in the same protein that gives them the same ability to tolerate that toxin. So, the – at least on that level, the evolutionary changes become predictable. And they said – they thought that it was predictable to a surprising degree, is how the scientists characterized that. So, that was interesting, but, you know, it does make sense, if there's only so many solutions to a problem, evolution's probably going to hit upon one of those solutions independently, over and over again, in multiple different lines. We do see that type of convergent evolution. They were just talking about it on the molecular level. So, good work, Bob and Jay. You did a good job.

J: Thank you.

R: Well done.

(''applause'')

S: And well done to much of the audience.

== Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:08:11) ==

S: And, Jay, you have a quote to close out the show for us?

J: All right. So, this is a quote sent in by a listener named Timo from Taiwan, and i think it's really cool that someone from Taiwan is into the person whose quote this is. And the quote is,

<blockquote>Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.</blockquote>

J: Who said that?

Audience: Paul Kurtz!

J: Paul Kurtz! A skeptic of some note.

E: Yes.

(''applause'')

S: Thank you, everyone! And thanks for coming to CSICon 2012!

RW: "The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe"! Let's hear it!

(''whistling and applause'')

{{Outro1}}

== References ==
<references/>

{{Navigation}}

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-17T14:18:02Z

Cornelioid: /* Science or Fiction (55:19) */ full transcript (proofread)

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|episodeDate = 3rd November 2012 
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|qowText = Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality. 
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|}}

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

RW: – a live edition of my favorite podcast and radio show. So, we're going to have Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Jay Novella, Even Bernstein, and – and a woman –

(''laughter'')

RW: – join us. It's the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe!

(''applause'')

S: Hello, and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

(''applause'')

S: Today is Thursday, October 25th, 2012, and we are live from [http://www.csiconference.org/ CSICon 2012].

(''applause'')

Joining me, as always, are Bob Novella –

B: Hey everybody!

(''cheers'')

S: – Rebecca Watson –

R: Hello, everyone!

(''cheers'')

''audience member'': I love you, Rebecca!

R: I love you, too!

S: – Jay Novella...Jay Novella –

J: Wooooo! Rebecca, yeah!

(''cheers'')

R: I love you, Jay!

S: – and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hello, Nashville!

(''cheers'')

S: So, how're you guys doing? How do you like Nashville?

J: It's awesome. I didn't – I thought people were going to literally be playing guitar when I got off the airplane.

B: Oh, come on, Jay.

S: Yeah, in the airport, you know?

J: Yeah.

== This Day in Skepticism (1:28) ==
November 3, 1957 Sputnik 2 launched

S: So, Rebecca, you always start us off with a This Day in Science and Skepticism. This show will be going up on November 3rd, so, did anything happen that day?

R: Nope.

(''laughter'')

B: Ever?

R: Oh, all right. One thing happened. One thing happened! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_2 Sputnik 2] happened.

S: ''Sputnik 2: The Revenge''.

(''laughter'')

R: ''Son of Sputnik''.

S: ''Son of Sputnik''.

J: ''Son of Sputnik''!

R: That's right. Sputnik 2 you might know as "the one that killed the puppy".

(''awwws'')

R: No? Aww, that's weird, 'cause I really thought that this would go over well at a live event! Yeah, Sputnik 2 is the craft that took Laika into orbit, Laika being the Soviet space dog who became the first animal in orbit—for about, like, 10 minutes, before she died.

E: Well, you know –

S: A couple of hours. It was a couple of hours. They thought he was going to survive for about ten days –

R: I think she's a "she".

S: – ''she'' was going to survive –

E: Eh.

R: Get it right, Steve!

S: You know, asexual Russian names, I mean, come on. But, they thought that Laika was going to survive for about ten days, but then they had a little mishap with the cooling system, and –

E: Oops.

S: Yeah. – got a little hot in the capsule—104 degrees, they said in (''inaudible'')

E: That'd be a hot dog. Yep.

(''groans'')

B: Oh, come on. My god.

E: Thank you. I'll be here all the weekend.

R: How – can we just take a moment, just to take a poll of the audience: How are our dead dog jokes doing? Good?

J: Yes!

(''applause'')

R: OK. All right. Yeah.

J: You know what? I didn't know until we researched this item that it was a one-way mission.

R: Yeah.

E: Mm-hmm.

J: That's really nasty.

S: Well, the capsule returned.

(''laughter'')

E: Yeah, well –

S: About 162 days later, it burned up in the atmosphere. But, yeah, they never intended to bring Laika back.

J: No, they actually were going to euthanize her with poison food after the tenth day, I think, right?

R: This is seriously the worst item ever. What was I thinking when I picked it?

S: There – there's Laika.

E: Aww. Aww.

R: Oh yeah! I didn't pick it! Steve forced me to!

E: But, we'd never know who this dog was if it didn't go on Sputnik 2, right? I mean, this would be an otherwise – another animal.

R: No, yeah, and I'm sure Laika appreciates the fame she gets from ''beyond the grave''.

E: She got her fifteen minutes.

== In Memorium ==
=== Paul Kurtz (3:45) ===
* 1925-2012

S: Well, we are going to start the new segment of the show with an ''in memoriam''. We do like to, on the ''Skeptic's Guide'', pause to remember those members of the skeptical community who have passed, and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] died several days ago, just the day before the organizers were coming down to the conference. He died on Sunday. He was 85 years old. It was 1925 to 2012, so that is 86. I can do math. (''audience laughter'') You'll know why i was confused in a moment.

R: 'Cause you're terrible at math?

S: Yes. So, before we get the show started, Ron Lindsay and Kendrick Frazier talked about Paul Kurtz. You know, he was one of the giants of the skeptical movement, of the skeptical community. You know, he was largely responsible for organizing the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, founding Prometheus Books, CFI, [http://www.secularhumanism.org/ Secular Humanism]. He was an academic, a philosopher. He really gave a lot of weight to the movement early on. He made it to that – he broke it to that next level. It wasn't that, you know, before he came on board. So he has to be remembered for that. We did have some interactions with Paul along the years. The first year that we started – (''audience cooing'')

R: Baby Steve!

E: Aww.

S: I was a little younger back then.

R: He's three years old there.

B: He's only half-grey there.

S: (''laughing'') I'm only half-grey!

E: A little less grey, yep.

S: You can mark my age by my greyness up until about ten years ago, when i went totally grey. Right when we got started, in 1996, you know, CSICOP, now CSI, you know, they were the big national skeptical organization. They'd definitely – They took us under their wing, you know, gave us their support, their local membership list, so that we could get our movement going. And i remember meeting Paul at the first World Skeptics Conference, and he was immediately—like, you know, your grandfather—like, you know, very, very comfortably took on that air of being a mentor. It's like, "Yeah, this is great. You're welcome to the skeptical movement." So i definitely remember him fondly in that way. A few years later, Paul organized a meeting of the local skeptical groups. In the picture here you can see me again with Bob, Perry, and Evan. The four of us came up together –

J: Now, if i remember correctly, Rebecca, you and i were off being badass somewhere else, right?

R: I think that's what was happening, yeah.

S: – and, i think, in the foreground, that's Colonel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Nickell Joe Nickell], isn't it?

E: Colonel.

S: Yeah, he had broke his leg in Spain, or something?

R: Round of applause for Colonel Joe Nickell!

E: I remember that.

(''applause'')

S: Joe actually is going to come up, and he's going to read a poem that he wrote, i believe, about Paul.

JN: Paul was a great supporter of the arts, and i hope he would have liked this. The poem is called "Book of Seasons: An elegy". (''Uncertain re: permission to reproduce poem'')

S: Thank you, Joe.

=== Leon Jaroff (7:34) ===
* 1926-2012

S: This same weekend, Saturday before the show, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_(magazine) Leon Jaroff] also died. ''He'' was 85, hence my confusion. So, Leon Jariff—not a big name in the skeptical community recently, and if you ask, you know, people at conventions like this if they knew who he was – I mean, in fact, right before the show Rebecca said to me, "Who's Leon Jaroff?"

R: (''indignant gasp'')

S: Sorry, Rebecca.

(''audience laughter'')

S: But he was perhaps one of the most skeptical journalists that we have had.

B: Yeah.

S: He was the science columnist for ''Time Magazine''. It was he who said, "You know, popularizing science is important, you know, we should start a science-dedicated magazine." And that was ''Discover Magazine''. That was him. He was not afraid to be a hard-nosed skeptic when writing about scientific issues. So, for example, when writing about chiropractors, [http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,213482,00.html he wrote],

<blockquote>
Chiropractors also employ a bewildering variety of weird practices to diagnose their patients. Some use applied kinesiology, a muscle test that supposedly can diagnose allergies and diseased organs. Hair analysis and iris readings are commonplace in the profession. Even sillier are many of the treatments that chiropractors use and recommend: homeopathic potions, colon irrigation, magnetic therapy, enzyme pills, colored-light therapy, and something called "balancing body energy," among other mystical procedures with undocumented effects.
</blockquote>

S: That's from a mainstream journalist writing in ''Time Magazine''. Do we see this kind of thing today? I don't think so.

B: Nope.

(''audience applause'')

S: So, you know, we do have to, I think, also note the support that Jaroff gave to such a good science journalism, and that kind of hard-nosed, skeptical science journalism is definitely something we miss. That's a void that, I think, that we in the skeptical community have to fill, but, unfortunately, it is a void.

== News Items ==
=== Big Bang Conference at CERN (9:31)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19870036 Big Bang and religion mixed in Cern debate]

S: Rebecca –

R: Yes!

S: – this is a different quote. It's not as good a quote.

<blockquote>
Science in isolation is great for producing stuff, but not so good for producing ideas.
</blockquote>

R: Mm-hmm.

S: Who said that?

R: That was said by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Pinsent Andrew Pinsent] at the Ramsey Center for Science and Religion. What I particularly liked about this quote is that it is completely reversed – it is the exact opposite of what I would have suggested.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I would say that science is actually really good at ideas, but, in order to produce stuff, you have to add something else. You know, like, they might be able to figure out lasers, but to make a CD player you need a marketing executive.

S: Or death ray.

R: Thank you. Yeah, of course. Why didn't I go there first?

(''laughter'')

R: Yeah, so, this quote comes from a recent article that the BBC produced: "Big Bang and religion mixed in CERN debates". Apparently, there was a conference recently that CERN held—you remember CERN, you know, the guys who, apparently, may have found –

J: Higgs!

R: – the Higgs boson.

S: A boson with Higgs-like properties.

R: A Higgs-like thing.

S: Boson, yeah.

R: A Higgish. I like "Higgish" –

B: "Higgish"?

R: – a little bit.

J: (''laughing'') "A little bit!"

S: "Higgy"?

B: (''singing, inaudible'') ''Higgy again."

R: So, yes. Apparently, I don't know the purpose – I don't know what, who dreamt this up, but what I'm thinking is that someone was concerned that they may have found a particle that many people know as the "God particle", and, so, they're concerned that they're going to be excommunicated or, you know, that people will rebel—religious people will rebel—against science. Basically, we'll have some sort of Dark Ages–esque thing happening, and, so, maybe somebody at CERN thought, "Well, we should have this conference where we talk about how religious people should be OK with the Higgs boson."

B: Mm-hmm.

R: So, those are the good intentions that I'm assuming are behind this conference that has speakers such as this. The quotes in here are pretty fun, and none of them have any amount of intelligence to them. Steve, you're the one who brought this one to my attention here –

S: Yes.

R: I'm interested in what – we've talked a little bit before about things like the Templeton Foundation, which is an organization that gives out a prize – gives out prizes to people who can explore science in a religious context, basically. And I'm a bit opposed to it. I feel like it's muddying the waters. I think we don't ''need'' to bring religion into what people are doing at CERN.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I think those two things are happily separated, but I'm interested in knowing your feelings on this.

S: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think trying to introduce theology into science is misguided. You know, this conference was specifically about the origin of the universe. So, it's not just about scientific issues in particular. I think the thinking, at least on the part of the theologians who were quoted about this conference, is that, well, you're talking about the origin of the universe. That's a really big question, and religion is about answering the really big questions—not science. Science is narrow and reductionist, and makes stuff, but can't really grapple with the big questions of our origins. And that's exactly incorrect, as you were saying. That's a complete knock to science. I mean, science is, in fact, the only human intellectual endeavor that ''can'' answer any empirical question about the origin of the universe.

R: Yeah.

J: So, was the conference, though, the scientists trying to appease religious people? The saying that –

R: Well, you know, apparently, this was – the conference was done on the part of CERN, according to BBC, and that's what I find troubling. I'm totally OK with a conference that religious people host, you know, and the topic might be "How do we –" you know, "How do we consider our theology now that we know ''X'', ''Y'', and ''Z''—now that science has discovered this? What does that mean for ''our'' belief system?" And I think that's fine, but, you know, apparently, the theologians who were there seem to think that this was a chance to ''debate'' the scientists –

J: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

R: – and, no! Why would you do that? Debate is completely the opposite direction of where you want to go.

S: It also – I mean, the quotes seem to me like a desperate grasp at relevance, trying to make it seem like they're – you know, that theology is still relevant to questions about origins of the universe, when, in fact, science has completely displaced it from that endeavor.

J: So, did it end up with, like, a fistfight? Like, what happened?

(''laughter'')

E: Science won.

R: I haven't found any evidence of any arrests, so, apparently –

S: There were no fisticuffs?

J: That really must've been awkward as hell, though, right? Like, they're like, sitting there, like, after a whole day, and they're like, "Uh, OK, it's over now."

E: Something tells me they're not going to be doing this again. They're going to learn from this.

S: I don't know.

R: Well, I mean, it's actually not even – like, I wish it had been that exciting. But, instead, it just seems like it was really ''boring'' –

E: Yeah.

R: – and nobody came to ''any'' conclusions. Because you ''can't'', you know?

S: Yeah.

R: You're just having a discussion of, like, well, you know, "But what don't we know?"

=== Italian Earthquake Scientists Convicted (14:57)===
* [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/22/us-italy-earthquake-court-idUSBRE89L13V20121022 Italian scientists convicted over earthquake warning]

S: Now, we're trying to keep – we like to keep our live shows really light –

(''laughter'')

E: So far, so good.

S: So, we thought we'd talk about a horrible earthquake that killed over three hundred people.

E: Yeah, let's go there.

R: Good intro. Good intro there.

S: But there's actually a better story embedded in that. There were six Italian scientists, who were recently convicted of manslaughter –

B: Yeah.

S: – for failure to properly communicate the warnings about the upcoming L'Aquila earthquake in 2009. Yeah, we've been following this story, you know, since it happened. The quick version is that there were a number of small tremors in this very earthquake-prone part of Italy, and the geologists—the local geologists—you know, were following it. And their opinion was that, well, these tremors are very common. Most such tremors are not followed by major quakes. Most major quakes are not preceded by these kinds of tremors. So, the probability of a major quake occurring is not particularly higher, you know, now, just because of these tremors, than at any time, and, therefore, there's no cause for alarm. Now, they were specifically asked during a press conference, "Should we panic?" You know, "Should we evacuate?" And they said "No. There's no reason to evacuate. Stay at home and drink a glass of wine."

B: Steve, was this about a year ago that we covered this?

S: 2009. 2009 –

B: Oh, wow. (''inaudible'')

S: – so, was the quake, and then the court trial started about a year ago, and now the decision came down that the six scientists were convicted to six years – I think six years in prison and something like, you know, millions of dollars in damages for manslaughter—for the deaths of the people who didn't evacuate because they – of their reassurances that there was nothing to be worried about.

R: That's horrific.

J: Well, i, you know, to play devil's advocate real quick, if there was true negligence—like, if they didn't follow through with things that they needed to do, if they did a terrible job at analyzing the data, in a fashion that – where the data could have been analyzed better, or they actually weren't asking their peers for the information—i can understand if there was extreme negligence.

S: Right.

J: But, even still, like, that's very hard to prove, and I just don't understand –

S: Well, I mean, not really. The question is, was their opinion within the standard for their profession? That's—in my opinion—that's the only real question here. You can't be blamed for being wrong, right? You can't be blamed for a bad outcome if you were following the standard. Now, of course, scientists can't predict earthquakes. You can't predict when an earthquake is going to occur. That's the bottom line. What – every statement they said was truthful, you know, every factual statement. "These tremors do not necessarily mean that there's an earthquake coming, and they are not a reason to evacuate. We don't evacuate every city where there's tremors because there might be a major quake, because it's not that predictive." So, that was not negligent. No, and they weren't really being accused of negligence. They were basically being accused of poorly communicating to the public. It seems to be based on a lot of false premises about what scientists ''can know''—what an expert about, you know, an earthquake, a geologist, expert ''can know''.

R: Yeah, they've been convicted for not using a magical power they don't have.

S: Yeah.

R: They might as well have convicted all the psychics in Italy for not accurately predicting this earthquake.

J: I think we need to be careful—i don't disagree, of course. I don't think that these men should be going to jail for this at all—but it is an important thing to state that, I think, people should go to prison, or get in trouble ''legally'', if they are misrepresenting science or – right? So you see where I'm going with this.

S: Well, yeah. If you are –

J: If you're setting that premise—you're saying, "Hey, these guys screwed up, they didn't do what they were supposed to do, they didn't communicate to us the real possible outcomes here", whatever—and, like –

S: Yeah.

J: – I'll reiterate, I don't think that they should be going to jail—

B: Well, I don't agree –

J: —but, I do think, though, that that standard that that court set needs to be applied all the way down the ladder.

B: Yeah, but, Jay, like, someone saying that "I have a cure for cancer and it's scientifically proven" but it's a sham?

J: Exactly, right? So, if they're going to actually take those scientists out and say "You're done. You're not performing science anymore and you're going to jail for that bad decision or information you gave", well, hello! Then, you know, all of a sudden, a million lawsuits need to be filed.

S: But, it wasn't – to clarify, though, it wasn't ''bad'', it was just ''unlucky''. I mean, doctors encounter this all the time, you know. You are asked to decide, you know, what tests to order, what diagnoses a patient might have. There's a whole lot of liability involved with that. You can't be convicted of malpractice just because of a bad outcome if what you did was within the standard of care.

B: Right.

S: So, was the information they were giving to the public within the standard for the profession? If the answer is "yes", the fact that there was a low-probability earthquake the next week is not their fault.

E: Right.

S: It doesn't change the fact – you know, if they're saying there's a 99% chance that there's not going to be an earthquake, and then the 1% thing happens, they were still right –

J: Yeah.

S: – in saying that it was unlikely.

R: Yeah.

E: Didn't the evidence show, basically, that they performed correctly, essentially? They did not –

S: That's the consensus. I mean, so, there's worldwide outrage, especially among the scientific community (''inaudible'') –

B: This has got to be shot down in a higher court.

S: Yeah.

B: This can't – can't possibly stand.

E: I hope so.

S: Well, there's two appeals left. There's two appeals, and they will stay out of prison before those appeals. So, the United States National Academy of Science, the Royal Academy of Science—the Royal Society, rather—issued a joint statement saying that "that is why we must protest the verdict in Italy. If it becomes a precedent in law, it could lead to a situation in which scientists will be afraid to give expert opinion."

J: Yeah, that's devastating.

E: Mm-hmm.

S: So, it would have a chilling effect. What – you know, what geologist is going to, you know, talk to the public in Italy now, if you could wind up in jail and, you know, financially devastated, and your career devastated, because you can't predict the future, you know, because you don't have a crystal ball? It's insane. It's insane.

J: Yeah. To think that they're going after these scientists, and they're not going after the rampant quackery throughout –

S: Well, there's that, too.

E: I wonder how much pressure they came under from, like, the families, the survivors, of this terrible, terrible devastation –

J: Oh yeah, they had to hang someone.

E: – and I imagine they put a lot of pressure on politicians and other people in order to hold ''somebody'' accountable.

J: They have to. They had to send someone down the river for that.

B: Did they have a trial?

S: Yeah.

B: Did they have witnesses and experts coming in?

S: Yeah. Yep.

B: I'd love to know the details of what exactly happened, because how could –

(''laughter'')

S: So, we'll see if the worldwide backlash has an effect. I mean, again, they do have two appeals left, so we'll definitely follow it.

=== Whale Makes Human Sounds (21:35)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20026938 Beluga whale 'makes human-like sounds']

S: All right, Rebecca, so, we have a cute animal –

R: Thank you.

S: – we're going to talk about now.

J: This is a happy one!

R: Just tell me this narwhal or whatever is alive.

S: It's a whale.

E: It's alive and well.

S: It's a beluga whale.

B: It sort of looks like a narwhal.

R: Tell me this beluga is alive!

E: That's NOC the beluga. They're very much alive.

R: It's not a beluga?

E: "NOC". N-O-C.

S: "NOC". NOC the beluga.

R: Oh! "That's NOC."

(''laughter'')

R: I was about to say, "No, ''that is a beluga''."

S: Sounds like a children's song.

E: It does sound like a children's –

S: Evan, sing it.

E: No.

S: OK.

J: Don't change it! Please don't –

E: If my daughter was here, maybe. But, no. So, what's important about NOC the beluga? Well, OK, so, picture this: You are part of the National Marine Mammal Foundation, OK, and you're in the tank, swimming around with the whales and stuff, and, all of a sudden, you hear somebody—you hear a voice—call your name. Something to the effect that – "Get out of the water! Get out of the water!" So, you're in the tank and you come up and you say, "OK, who told me to get out of the water? Who told me to get out of the water?" And the other scientists and people are looking around you like, "Nobody? What the heck are you talking about?" And, he's like, "Well, I definitely ''heard'' that!" Well, what did he actually hear? Well, apparently, NOC the beluga made some noises very reminiscent of human noises. Beluga whales are, you know, incredible creatures. Their calls – They're known as the canaries of the sea. They have a very high-frequency, high-pitched tone to their noises that they make, but they make lots of different kinds of noises. They can emit up to eleven different kinds of sounds—crackles, whistles, trills, squawks—all sorts of things. But, it's been rumored that these whales can emit noises that sound like humans talking. And, for the first time, they've actually recorded NOC the whale making these noises, and they have it on tape. And we have it on tape.

R: Nah.

(''NOC makes unnervingly human-sounding noises'')

R: Did he maybe just swallow a kazoo?

(''laughter'')

J: Everybody has a drunk neighbor that makes those noises.

(''laughter'')

E: Oh, gosh. Who knows what the heck he was saying? You know, dolphins have been taught to mimic noises that kind of sound like human voices, but, before this, there's been no record of an animal ''spontaneously'' coming up and making these kinds of noises. This is the first evidence, the first hard evidence we have of it.

R: Here's – I have a theory. I have a theory. I have a theory that – so, whales, in general, are incredibly intelligent –

E: Oh yeah.

R: – possibly as smart as us, but they don't want thumbs, or any way to talk to us –

E: Or fire.

R: – and I feel like they do, basically – That's true. No, I saw Spongebob once. There was fire under the sea. I think it can be done.

S: Yep, but they don't have nanotechnology, though.

R: They don't. So, my theory is that whales are basically, like – they have – it's like they have locked-in syndrome, you know? Where they're just –

J: Oh, no.

R: – super-intelligent, and there's all these people around them, and they're just messing with them –

J: So, he was screaming, actually –

R: Yeah! And, so, he's been like, his whole life, he's been in this stupid little – like, he's in captivity, right? So, he's been in this stupid little aquarium, and he's just, like, "I hate all of you! And I'm going to will myself to tell you, because you're too stupid to understand!"

E: So, basically, what's going on here is, the whale has learned to change – rapidly change pressure within its naval cavity in order to create these sounds. And, it hasn't – the whale is able to over-inflate what's known as its vestibular sac in its blowhole, which is normally acts to stop water from basically coming in. So, the whale is going through a lot of, you know, effort, essentially, to try to make these noises. And I'm sure they're going to be trying to figure out exactly, you know, basically, ''why'' is the whale doing this?

S: Well, he just – this whale was – did spend his life in captivity –

E: Yeah.

S: – so, he did hear human speech a lot, and maybe he's just, to some extent, mimicking the sounds that he grew up hearing his whole life.

J: It's definitely – it definitely has a human sound to it, in the cadence and everything.

S: Yeah.

J: I mean, he's intelligent enough to mimic a human, which is really cool.

R: Yeah.

J: And, then, you always think, you know, if he can mimic a human—if his brain is advanced that much—you know, maybe he –

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But, is he mimicking humans or making fun of humans? You know, like people make fun of other languages?

R: Yeah, he's just like "Weh! Weh! Weh! This is what you sound like!"

E: Yeah. You stupid bald monkey and (''inaudible'')! Get out of here!

B: Sounds like a false dichotomy.

=== PANDAS Controversy (26:18)===
* [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/a-pandas-story/ A PANDAS Story]

S: So, we're going to talk about – going from talking about beluga whales to talking about PANDAS! Except, we're not talking about pandas, because we're talking about –

E: Wait.

R: Stop toying with my emotions, Steve!

S: I had to put a cute picture of a panda up there for you, Rebecca. We are talking about pediatric autoimmune –

R: It makes sense.

S: – neuropsychiatric disorder associated with –

E: I didn't know PANDA was an acronym. Cool!

R: Steve, I miss the panda.

S: – streptococcal infection—or, PANDAS. See? There's a panda.

(''laughter, cooing'')

E: Aww!

R: Yay.

S: We're talking about PANDAS –

E: Aww.

R: Boo.

J: Oh.

E: That's worse.

S: – which is a legitimately controversial medical diagnosis! So, essentially, what happens is, children suddenly develop ticks—like Tourette syndrome—and psychiatric disorders—obsessive–compulsive disorder—and it is thought that, in some cases, that it is actually – the inciting event is an infection—bacteria—streptococcal infection. Now, of course, it's always difficult to establish the reality of a new disease. Unless you get all your ducks in a row, and all the, you know, pathology all adds up, it's sometimes difficult to identify a legitimate new syndrome and to prove that – cause and effect. So, correlation is one thing. As we know, correlation is not ''necessarily'' causation. And, so, the syndrome exists. There are – the number of physicians who have identified the sudden onset psychiatric – neuropsychiatric disorder, and in some cases it is temporally associated with a streptococcal infection. But that's not the same thing as saying that the strep infection ''caused'' the neuropsychiatric syndrome. So, that's – and there's the controversy. Now, of course, we live in the modern Internet age. So, as soon as a scientist says, "I think that there's this syndrome—I want to call it PANDAS—and – sort of, you know, a psychiatric syndrome provoked by a bacterial infection", of course, there are now support groups, and there's groups on the Internet, and there's patient groups supporting this diagnosis before the science is even settled. And, then, of course, once that happens, when you try to do more science, or have any kind of discussion about whether or not this is a real syndrome, you have parents and patient groups and advocacy groups, you know, calling you all kinds of nasty names and saying there's a conspiracy against people with PANDAS, it's all the insurance companies and Big Pharma and evil doctors or whatever. So, that's the situation that we're in the middle of right now, unfortunately, is that, before the science is settled, you know, there's the scientific controversy, then there's the public controversy. This came to the media attention recently because of a 16-year-old girl called Elizabeth Wray. She developed, you know, a syndrome like PANDAS with ticks and psychological disorders, was diagnosed by a physician with PANDAS, and then was transferred to Boston's Children's Hospital for – presumably for further treatment of PANDAS. Now, the story that is going around the PANDAS community is that once she got to Boston University—or Boston Children's Hospital—she was told – the parents were told, "We don't believe that PANDAS is real – that it exists", and then they essentially admitted their daughter to the psychiatric unit and started treating her with psychiatric medications. Now, I don't know if that's true, because the doctors and the hospital are not telling their side of the story because of patient confidentiality. So, we don't know what their side of the story is. We only know the parents' side of the story, filtered through the PANDAS community. Unfortunately, now there's – this story has taken on a life of its own. There's a Free Elizabeth Wray movement going on within the PANDAS community, they're telling all kinds of horror stories about Boston Children's Hospital, and, you know, we can't verify any of it. What's interesting in reading about it is that each side has their narrative—and I wrote about this on Science-Based Medicine—because one of the things that – the ideas that we're wrestling with in the skeptical community is that—well, all right, we have, I think, a good approach to critical thinking, we understand a lot about self-deception, about the nature of science and pseudoscience—but we don't always have a good story to tell the public, or we have a hard time convincing mainstream outlets that we have – that our story is an interesting and good one. You know, we have to really market our narrative—the skeptical narrative. When you read about stories like this, the PANDAS proponents have a really compelling emotional narrative. It may be total B.S.—i don't know—but it's very compelling. They have a story of a child suffering from an unusual disease, parents who just want to do what's right for her—I believe all those things are correct—and then they are, essentially, being abused by a dismissive and skeptical medical establishment who doesn't believe in this disease, and that is treating their child with perhaps harmful, you know, psychiatric medications. They even – this went to court. Apparently, the hospital thought that the parents were being negligent in not allowing them to give proper standard of care—psychiatric treatment—to their child, and they wanted to have custody taken away from the parents, and they wanted to admit Elizabeth to a locked psychiatric ward—again, not sure – I can't verify those from the hospital's side of things. A judge – a Massachusetts judge essentially made her a ward of the state while they sorted out what was going on, but they did not grant the hospital their request to treat her in the way that they wanted to. So, they essentially just – the state took her out of everybody's hands for a moment – for the moment. So, it's interesting. Of course, the PANDAS community, again, is up in arms, you know. The court essentially took custody away from these parents that are only trying to do what's right for their daughter. But, of course, you could see the other narrative—you know, let's assume that the physicians think that—even if you think – whether or not you think PANDAS really exists—they think that she has a psychiatric illness, the parents are in denial, they're pursuing this false diagnosis, and they're, you know, refusing standard medical care. That's a story, too.

B: What if you just pulled out the whole strep association, and just treat it like a "pandisorder"? Is their beef that it's associated with strep, and they don't think there's any association? Why don't they just treat it like a neuropsychiatric disorder –

S: Yeah.

B: – and forget about the whole strep association?

S: Well, because the strep association would lead you to treat with things like antibiotics. So, that's the question: Should you treat it with antibiotics, or should you treat her like a psychiatric (''inaudible'') patient?

J: Why not both? I mean, why wouldn't you –

S: Well, she has had at least one round of antibiotics. You can also treat it like an autoimmune disease, with, like, intravenous globulin, for example. So, I mean, these are real medical questions. Do we treat it like an infection, do we treat it like a post-infectious auto-immune disease, or do we treat it like a psychiatric disorder? Those are real questions.

J: Steve, are you saying pandas don't exist? Let me just get this straight.

(''laughter'')

S: So, well, I did – to give a serious answer to your sarcastic question, I did –

R: My favorite kind.

S: – take the opportunity – I'm good that way. I'm good that way. I did take the opportunity just to familiarize myself with the PANDAS literature—again, I always emphasize, I'm no an expert in this, but I can read the literature and give my opinion like a science journalist—i think it's genuinely controversial. When I read the research, there's lots of – the ducks are not in a row. So, when you do things like treat kids who apparently have PANDAS with antibiotics in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, they don't necessarily improve. And, if you look for the antibodies that are supposed to be there, they don't necessarily correlate with the disease onset or with the existence of strep. So –

B: So, this is clearly not like autism and vaccines. It's just more complicated than that.

S: So, no. So, right. So, autism and vaccines, like, I would say, that's been studied enough to say that autism's – that autism is not caused by vaccines. We can say that. We can make the negative statement. I cannot make the negative statement that PANDAS does not exist, only that the research so far has not reached the threshold where we can agree that it does exist and that there is some actual negative data—there's some positive data, too—so it's legitimately controversial. It did remind me, though, of the chronic Lyme disease controversy—

R: Yeah.

S: —which is very common in New England—again, where they think that a number of symptoms, including neurological symptoms, can be caused by a bacterial infection and treated with antibiotics. And the same – there's a lot of overlap in those two communities, you know.

J: Steve, are you saying that the public has unrealistic expectations?

S: Well, I think – it's partly that. I mean, I think the public is uncomfortable with the uncertainty, and they like this sort of hero–villain narrative, so they paint the medical community as the villains, and—except for those maverick physicians who understand. They're Lyme-literate, or they understand PANDAS, so they're the heroes—and, then, the insurance companies don't want to pay for, you know, over-and-over recurrent courses of IV antibiotics, so they're the villains, you know. They're not—I'm not defending insurance companies, but sometimes they actually – sometimes they're right. They don't want to pay for things that are not science-based or evidence-based. So, it's complicated. And, you know, how do we – so, how do we deal with a child with this disorder when we don't know what the best scientific answer is—we don't know if it's autoimmune, infectious, or psychiatric? We just have to, you know, do the best we can—and there may be different physicians who would take different approaches—but to portray it as "PANDAS definitely exists. If you don't believe in it, you're dismissive and you're mean and evil, or you're protecting some kind of Big Pharma grant that you're getting"—they always bring that up—rather than saying, "You know, we really want to know the right answer, but we just haven't found it yet. It's still – it's legitimately controversial."

J: Yeah, I think what you're saying does confirm what I was thinking, is that the public wants an answer, science is not yet done figuring this one out, and –

S: Yeah. Like the earthquake one, right?

J: Yeah.

S: Sometimes the answer is, "We don't know yet", you know. "We need to do more research". In medicine, we have to make decisions with imperfect, you know, information, so, you know.

J: Wouldn't it be typical, too – like, let's say that this is happening over and over again –

S: Yeah.

J: – like, at some point, some doctors are going to come up with different ideas, they're going to try it out, you know. The trial-and-error process happens, and—i hate to say it, but—this girl is probably going to be one of the people that gets tested on with new ideas.

S: Well, I mean – well, if you're really testing then you should be doing a research protocol. If you're just applying the best knowledge that we have to an individual patient, that's – a certain amount of trial and error with that that's not really experimentation. So, there is a difference there. So, I don't know. The other interesting question that I'm kind of alluding to is, what role do the patient or the advocacy groups play? I think, a lot of times, that they are helpful in raising awareness for a disease or a disorder and raising funding, and advocating for patients. You know, I've seen, I think, there's a lot of very effective, very good patient advocacy groups out there. But, sometimes, they put their nickel down on a specific scientific answer, and that's not their job.

J: Yeah.

S: It's not their job to predict or demand that science give them the answer they want. And, you know, unfortunately, some people want the answer to be "an infection"—not "genes", not, you know, "We don't know".

J: Yeah. It's curable. That's the one they want.

S: Of course, who – that's the answer I would want to have! "It's something outside that is, you know, foreign, that can be cured, and that can reverse my child to the way that they were". Who – every parent wants that to be the answer, but sometimes you – you know, you have to step back from what you want and listen to the evidence. That's the – that's the scientist's, that's the physician's job, you know. You should just let them do their job, you know.

J: All right, so, I want to bring up a quick side point on this.

S: Yeah.

J: So, as an example, let's say, fifty years ago, let's say this was happening. What stance do you think the public would have differently than what we're seeing today?

S: It's the same, and this ''did'' happen fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, you know, she would be diagnosed with neurosyphilis—maybe not somebody who was sixteen, but that was the stand-in for what we now would, you know, the same subculture would diagnose with chronic Lyme. There were believers in that. There were physicians who believed in treatments like chelation therapy, you know, and science proved it wrong, and they said, "Well, we don't care, we're going to still do it. We're going to come up with – We're just going to keep coming up with special pleading and alternate theories, and form our own societies and our own – and just keep doing it, and say that it's all a conspiracy."

J: Mm-hmm.

S: So, but, I think that it's just the turnaround time is so much faster because of the Internet. Like, another example: CCSVI, right? The alleged blockage in the veins that drained blood from the brain, causing multiple sclerosis. It's that – that whole process—of Dr. Zamboni proposing this entity and a treatment, to it being researched, to it being refuted, to, you know, patient advocacy groups springing up and calling for conspiracies and calling for research and demanding that science give them the answer that they want—all has taken place within a few years. We've seen that cycle happen right before our eyes. So, the Internet is just making it happen a lot quicker and a lot bigger, I think. But it's always been this way.

J: So do you have any ideas on what we could do? Could the skeptical community do anything to help this (''inaudible'')?

S: Well, I think what we do is, we discuss the issue from a science, logical, critical thinking point of view, you know. We point out the role of science in this, and we, I think, we try to bring the public discourse to a level that can deal with it in a more productive way, rather than the conspiracy mongering, sort of lowest-common-denominator that it would otherwise sink to.

J: Yeah.

=== Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44)===
* pnd

S: Well, let's move on. Jay, we're talking about how the media presents stories about paranormal activities.

J: Yeah, this is interesting. So, a professor decided to—Professor Brewer decided that—because what we're seeing over the years is a very obvious interest, in the general public, to news articles, and to TV shows, that talk about ghosts—and, you know, we've all seen the ''Ghost Hunter'' TV show—and, to people like us, at best, we watch it, and it's fun, right? 'Cause it's ridiculous and entertaining, and we like to see people from our perspective—a skeptical perspective—they're acting foolishly. But, there are a lot of people that are watching this, and they're riveted. Like, they really love it and they think a lot of it's real—and, I'm sure, to a certain degree, I can't say everyone that watches it and thinks everything about it is real—but, in the end, there's a huge entertainment factor there, and, unfortunately, to us skeptics, we feel like there's a lot of people that simply believe it, and that's their favorite entertainment. And I know a lot of people—I'm friends with a lot of people—that literally have active discussions on Facebook all the time, that I dip into, that are talking about the latest TAPS show. It would be be, "Can you believe it?" and "I knew that place was haunted!", and they're like, you know, getting whooped up.

S: I don't get it. I just don't get it. Nothing happens!

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

R: That's not true! That's not true.

E: Like "Seinfeld", yeah.

S: But, I mean, but they never find a ghost.

R: Steve, Steve. Did you feel that?

(''laughter'')

R: That happens! That happens all the time.

(''applause'')

R: They feel so much.

J: The thing is, you know –

S: I want to see a [http://www.hark.com/clips/pnzwffccqk-10-people-witnessed-a-free-floating-full-torso-vaporous-apparition full, floating torso] drift across the camera lens. Then I'll be impressed.

B: I still won't believe it. (''inaudible'')

S: No, but at least it'll be entertaining.

J: A lot of the shows, though, they're all right on the cusp, you know, of the noise, right? They're always right on that cusp. They're always ''just'' seeing something, or something falls over, you know? Or there's a noise from upstairs, or whatever, and it's never – they never give you that, you know? You don't get that –

R: This, actually – this came up—tomorrow I'll be talking about the [http://paranormalroadtrip.org/ paranormal road trip] that I just went on with [http://www.jonronson.com/ Jon Ronson] and [http://richardwiseman.wordpress.com/ Richard Wiseman] that got us here—and, at one of the stops, we were at a – we did talk to someone in a "haunted museum", and she was telling us that "the ghost hunters were there, and it was very exciting because there was a noise in the attic, and there were steps (''step sounds'') even though nobody was up there, and so the ghost hunter ran over and climbed up the ladder and looked into the attic, and, just then, a lady, dressed all in white, came ''flying at him'', and he shrieked in horror and fell down the ladder, and it was all really dramatic", and we were just completely blown away, obviously. We were riveted –

E: Yeah, well.

R: – and we said, "We cannot ''wait'' to see that footage!"

(''groans'')

R: – and she said, "Actually, I mean, it was so good, they didn't actually get that on camera.

B: Darn it!

R: No, all the cameras were down in another room somewhere."

J: Yeah, of course.

E: Well.

S: That was like –

R: "There's literally no evidence of it", though. Yeah.

S: – Ed Warren. We were investigating Ed Warren. He told us this story of being in a haunted house, and they had a local news crew over there, and, like, for two hours, they videotaped things flying around the room, you know, like, I say, really impressive, you know, smoking-gun evidence of paranormal activity. We're like, "Great! Can we see that footage?"

E: Sure!

J: "Yeah!"

S: "You know what? They taped over it for the news segment later that night."

(''laughter'')

S: Go figure. Stupid news crew.

J: So, I – I'm going to ask a couple of questions that I want you guys to not answer right now, but just think about it, 'cause these are pretty obvious questions, but I think they're interesting. "Why do people believe, or like to believe, in the paranormal? What's the attraction?" It's an interesting question if you think about it. There are people that ''really'' seek it out and love it. And there's something exciting about it. There's something kind of visceral about it. To my mind—to a skeptical mind—I don't have a connection to it. I just don't see what that allure is, other than, maybe—because I do like horror movies, and I do like to get scared. I love being actually scared sitting in a movie theater. It doesn't happen that often, but when it does happen it's very thrilling—and, maybe they're just having a lot of those thrilling moments. It's easier for them to get scared.

R: But, also, I mean, don't you think, maybe, it's got something to do with the fact that, maybe, we're not going to rot in the ground and die and never see our loved ones again...? Maybe?

J: Maybe? It's – you know, I'm not going to say no, but when I think about it, there's something thrilling about it. I'm not thinking, as I'm being thrilled in a horror movie, "Oh, I'm defying death by being thrilled right now!" That's not happening. I'm just – there is something – it's like, you know, eating something really spicy that hurts.

S: Yeah, but to –

J: It hurts, but it's good at the same time, right?

E: Uh.

S: To a lot of people, definitely, you know, evidence of ghosts is evidence of the afterlife. That's the appeal.

R: Yeah, and when we talk to people who describe their own experiences often—they're talking about Grandma and Grandpa and whatnot coming back to them and telling them that it's all OK—you know, and they're very comforting messages –

E: Yeah, which is why –

S: They want a narrative.

E: Which is why they watch these shows. It reinforces these positions that these people have, you know, and they derive a certain, you know, need out of it.

J: I wonder, though, because those shows are ''so bad''! They're so bad. Can they really be, you know?

R: I mean, there's a lot of – No, no, no! Personally, I would derive a lot of happiness from knowing that my dearly beloved grandmother, who I adored when I was young—she died when I was young—I would get so much happiness knowing that she was just screwing around with asshole ghosthunters on TV. Just, like, brushing past them and then disappearing whenever the cameras come out you know? That would give me a lot of satisfaction, knowing that.

J: Well, maybe the skeptical version of it is watching a YouTube video of Hitchens just tearing some moron apart, right? That's our version of that?

E: That releases endorphins, yeah.

J: 'Cause that makes me believe in something, right?

E: Yeah.

J: It gives me a thrill, but – OK, anyways. So, there is an article we're talking about here. So, Dr. Paul Brewer, who is – teaches at the University of Deleware, developed a study that was recently published in the journal ''Science: Communication'' that examines the influence of the media on the public's perception of the paranormal. So, here is his test: He took four news articles that were similar to each other, but they had significant differences in some of the details. The essence of it was, he had an article on one end of the spectrum that described a paranormal effect with a paranormal investigator, and they were using instruments to measure things, or whatever. And, then, as you go down to the fourth article, the fourth article gets very descriptive about using, you know, faux scientific language to make the paranormal investigators sound scientifically-minded, and using scientific tools. And, what he found was, the more of the faux science that was in the article, the more that the people believed that the paranormal accounts were true. You know, it's kind of a kick in the gut for us skeptics, because—and for us scientists, because—they're using our lingo, and our vernacular, and the way that we go about presenting data, and they're fooling people with it—because, I think, the general public is trained to a certain degree to recognize scientific language and recognize the formality of science—and they're using that—and I don't know how deliberate it is. Maybe they figured it out for the TV shows, that, you know, "hey, the more we B.S. this, the more we make this meter look cool and we throw in, you know, technical jargon, the more people that are going to be interested in our TV show"—

B: I think they also believe it themselves, Jay. They think they're being scientific.

J: Yeah.

E: That's right, yeah.

B: That's a big part of it as well.

E: You bet they do.

J: So, Brewer said it wasn't just any story about paranormal investigators that made people believe in ghosts and haunted houses. It was a story about how they were scientific. So, he puts a big emphasis on the science there. And, the good news was that he said that they might look at this and say, "Well, all it takes is this sprinkle of some acronyms in there, and wave around a cool-looking thing that beeps, and suddenly people believe in ghosts and haunted houses." Now, the one cool thing about his research was, he also found that if, at the end of the article, there was a skeptical disclaimer that said "This is the skeptical perspective. This is why that investigation was wrong. This is the mistakes that they made and this is why these instruments are bogus."—if they threw that in there—it actually made the people believe in the claims a lot less.

R: What?

J: Yeah, it actually worked.

R: The thing that we're always complaining about—that, like, one sentence that presents –

S: The token skeptic?

E: The token skeptic, yeah.

R: – the entirety of skeptical opinion—that actually does make a difference?

J: Well, I don't want to – I don't want to say that the token skeptic 30-second B.S. blurb that they cut on most of the TV shows that we see works. The way that he presented it, it seemed a little bit like it had more teeth. It wasn't a quick thing. I think it was a little bit more of a takedown.

S: So, there was a series of studies about ten years ago, where they looked at the same thing—at the presentation of pseudoscience in a documentary and its effect on people's belief in the subject matter, like belief in UFOs or alien visitation—and they found some similar things in that, when it was presented scientifically, that absolutely increased belief. They also found that if, at any point in time, it was said—there was any kind of disclaimer saying—the following claims are true, or that the following claims may or may not be true, or whatever—anything positive or negative—reduced belief, or reduced the increase in belief, following the segment. So, anything that triggered people's questioning about, is it true or is it not true, was actually a good thing. But they found the opposite in that the token skepticism at the end—a scientist coming in at the end and saying, you know, "We've evaluated this, and it's not true", ''increased'' belief in the thing, because it lent legitimacy to the whole enterprise—the very fact that a scientist was spending their time and giving their attention to it.

J: Oh, yeah.

S: So –

B: Is that a cultural change –

S: Well, maybe –

B: – or is it the study?

S: Well, all right. I don't know. I don't know what the answer to that is. But, one possible interpretation may be that the ''token'' ineffective skepticism actually has a negative effect in raising belief in the paranormal because it's lending false legitimacy, but if you give ''effective'', you know, analysis—

B: Yeah.

S: —effective skeptical analysis—maybe you could reverse that and bring it back down.

J: Yeah, from from what the article said, it was, I think, an equal paragraph on the skeptical perspective –

S: Yes.

J: – and, specifically –

S: We really do have to argue for equal time and for getting the skeptical position –

J: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

S: – not the talking head blurb token skepticism may not – may still be counterproductive.

J: And the thing that he said was that there was that the article, the paragraph, did a takedown of the people that were claiming to be scientists.

S: Mm-hmm.

J: So, it stripped their expertise away, in essence.

S: Yeah. Yeah.

J: So, you know, I think it's interesting. I think that we're hard-wired for these things. I find, unfortunately, more and more TV programs—hey, you guys noticing, what's with the reality TV? Like, why is reality TV taking over television? Have you asked yourself that question?

S: 'Cause it's cheap.

E: It's cheap.

S: It's cheap, yeah.

(''applause'')

== Live Q&A (51:06) ==
* Questions from the CSICon audience

S: OK, we do have a few minutes for some Q&A. If you want to ask us a question—you can ask us anything. We won't necessarily answer, but you can ask—

Q1: Rebecca, I hate to break this to you, but NOC the beluga died five years ago.

R: God damn it!

J: Aww.

(''groans'')

R: God damn it, Tim Farley!

J: Tim Farley!

Q2: On a more serious note, Jay, apropos of what you said, I'm waiting for the skeptics community to have some reaction to the television show [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Island_Medium ''The Long Island Medium''] –

J: Oh.

S: Yeah.

Q2: – especially when she has kids on the program and she's telling them that, you know, she's talking to their dead parent.

J: Yeah, yeah. It's pathetic.

R: Oh. What a sick line.

S: I haven't brought myself to watch it yet. You know, I know it's out there. At some point, I think we probably should bite the bullet and then do an actual review, but I – the reports that I heard are, as you say, really abusive –

E: Yeah.

S: – very exploitative, not just that it's totally gullible nonsense. It's really exploitative. Yep.

Q3: Love your podcast, listen a lot. Always wondered whose voice says, "And now it's time for Science or Fiction".

J: That's changed over the years. The –

S: The current voice is –

R: It's Izzy.

S: – Izzy. Izzy.

J: Izzy Lawrence, yeah.

R: Izzy Lawrence. She has a podcast called [http://sundayssupplement.blogspot.com/ "Sundays Supplement"]. She's a skeptic and a stand-up comedian in England (''inaudible'').

S: So that's a genuine British accent, unlike some of the previous people who have said this.

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

S: Yes?

Q4: Yeah, with this – the Italian decision about the geologists and the – not predicting the volcano—or the earthquakes—there could – there's, like, a silver lining here. This could be a boon to the insurance industry, because maybe geologists and seismologists need to take out malpractice insurance.

J: Mm-hmm.

R: That's your "silver lining"? The insurance companies? Like, "Well, with all of this, I was really worried about the HMOs, but it looks like I'll be all right."

Q5: All right. Hi, guys! I love the podcast and I love everything you guys do. I'm –

S: Really? Everything we do? You don't know half the stuff that we do.

J: Yeah!

R: You don't want to know.

Q5: Certainly everything I'm aware that you guys do –

S: Oh, OK.

Q5: – and assume you do, which is really (''inaudible'')

S: Good caveat.

J: He hasn't seen [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1X1FOZmmVA "Occ: The Skeptical Caveman"] yet, so –

Q5: Oh, I certainly have!

J: Oh, and you like it?

Q5: Yeah, it's really good stuff!

R: Don't sound so surprised, Jay.

J: Just kidding.

Q5: Anyway. I'm a teaching assistant, and I help teach a lot of science courses—a lot of basic science courses—and we teach the scientific method—and most people understand the scientific method—but there's this other part that never gets explicitly put in there, like, this honesty and integrity built into it, like you need to make sure that the effect that you're trying to explain is really there, and that kind of stuff. Have you guys come up with a really good way to explain that part of science to people?

S: You mean that you just have to be ethical? Or you have to really care about the truth, I guess, is what you're saying?

Q5: Yes.

S: Yeah. I mean, I think—you're right, that is sort of implicit in the scientific process, that, you know, you're trying to find the actual answer, not just work backwards to the answer that you want to have—so, I think that's also implicit in scientific skepticism. I mean, that's part of – you know, one of our core values is, we want to know what's really ''really'' true, not just what ''seems'' to be true, and sometimes you have to dig really, really hard, and you have to be skeptical of your own conclusions. I mean, that ''is'' skepticism, I think, what you're saying. So, I think – combine that with the scientific method and you have scientific skepticism.

J: Yeah, but I think he was asking more about teaching the idea that you – we want to know the truth and be passionate about the truth –

S: Yeah.

J: – and I – it's a hard thing to teach, I think. I think that, you know, we're all kind of freakish in the idea that we're into skepticism. It's – it is something that you could teach your kids, absolutely. But, you know, how do you teach an adult to get into the truth, and get rid of all the garbage that's in their heads? It's hard, as, you know, as people get older, it's hard for them to learn that, I think. But I do agree with you. I think we need to inspire kids to—first off, teach them skepticism. Let's just start with that—I think that the caring will come with that.

== Science or Fiction (55:19) ==

S: "Science or Fiction". I'm going to read you three items—two are real, one is fiction—and then we'll poll the audience. We'll see which one you think is the fiction. So, here we go. [http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1112720858/astronauts-blood-pressure-low-gravity-102612/ Item number one]: "A new study finds that astronauts who spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% increased risk of heart attacks and strokes."

J: Whoa.

S: [http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/67117-first-feathered-dinosaurs-found-in-north-america Number two]: "Scientists have discovered the first feathered dinosaur in the western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers." And [http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S35/06/74S40/ item number three]: "Researchers find that, at the molecular level, evolutionary changes can be highly predictable." All right, so, let's start by polling the audience. Applaud for the one that you think is the ''fiction''. How many people here think that the one about astronauts and heart attacks is the fiction?

(''applause'')

S: OK. How many think the feathered dinosaur is the fiction?

(''very limited applause'')

S: OK.

E: Oh.

S: And how many think that the evolution-is-predictable is the fiction?

(''applause'')

S: OK. I think that was 3–1–2.

R: Hmm.

S: Let's start at this end, Evan. Why don't you tell us what you think?

E: OK –

S: And, I'd like to remind my co-hosts, this is a live show. Keep it quick.

E: "New study finds that astronauts who have spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% chance of – increased risk of heart attack and strokes." OK, so, hmm. What would be the trick here? "More than one month in microgravity. That is a long time, essentially, but 35%—I don't know. That seems like kind of a high number. A lot of things do happen to people in space—microgravity and so forth—and they do carefully study that and the effects on astronauts and so forth, so perhaps that one is true. Second one: "First feathered dinosaurs, western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers." I have no idea about that one. Not a clue. Not a clue. I'll jump to the third one. "Researchers find that, at the ''molecular level'', evolutionary changes can be highly predictable. At the molecular level. That's fascinating. Now, the audience said that that one was going to be most likely the fiction.

S: ''You're'' trying to convince ''them''.

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

E: Well, you know, I think they convinced me, more than I'm going to convince them, of that one, right? I think – at the molecular level. I don't see it. I just can't see it happening at that level. "Evolutionary change is highly predictable." There's a bit of a vagary there in regards to the highly predictable at that level. I'll say that that one is fiction. I agree with the audience.

S: OK. Rebecca?

R: Yeah, I found the audience's argument very convincing as well.

(''laughter'')

R: I have heard about health problems associated with low gravity—zero gravity—"35% increased" – it's the specifics that I'm not sure about. That doesn't seem ridiculous to me, that—35% increase, relatively speaking—i, you know, that doesn't sound too crazy to me. I feel like that could be – easily be science, knowing what I know about other health risks in zero gravity. I do think that there was recently a feathered dinosaur discovered. My problem here is that I believe it—I could be completely wrong about this—but I believe it was discovered in North America, and I do believe it was the first one in North America. Those are my thoughts. But, is that the first one in the western hemisphere? I don't know. So, now I'm trying to think, if there had been one discovered in South America before, because that's still the western hemisphere.

S: Last time I checked, yeah.

R: So, but, would you be that niggling? I'm not sure. And so that leaves us with the idea that evolutionary changes are highly –

S: "Predictable."

R: – predictable—thank you—on the molecular level. Yeah, that does seem way out there to me, 'cause it's written in such a way that makes me think that you have reversed that. But maybe that's what you're trying to make me think. So, for me, it's between the first and the third one, because—and, I should say that I question the first one simply because it doesn't seem out of the ordinary to me, and so you might be trying to, uh, to switch it up—''so I'm staring deep into your eyes, 'cause I don't normally get this chance''.

E: Yeah, it's like a poker read here, yeah.

R: This is like – yeah, this is like a game of poker.

E: Poker.

R: You just look bored.

(''audience'')

R: That's what I'm getting from you right now, is an intense feeling of –

S: What, are you trying to cold read me now?

R: – boredom. I'm seeing an "M".

J: (''in unison'') I'm seeing an "M".

E: I see the number "3".

R: "M – Murder you if you don't get me the answer." That's what I'm getting from you.

E: "M – Murder".

R: So I'm going to go with the audience. I'm going to say that the evolutionary change is –

S: Evolutionary predictable. OK.

R: Yeah.

S: Bob?

B: OK, live show. The astronaut one, number one. 35% seems high to me. I know there's some major issues for extended stays in microgravity. They've gotta exercise, like, hours a day just to maintain what – you know, some muscle tone. But a month doesn't seem long enough, and 35% seems a little bit too much. 'Cause, I know that, when they come back, yeah, things can be tough in 1''g'', but they get it back fairly quickly. So let's look at the other ones here. "First feathered dinosaur"? Yeah. Would it be the first? I know there – they discovered so many in China, but they could be the first one in the western hemisphere. "Another dinosaur group." You would think it would be another dinosaur group if it was the first in the western hemisphere. The third one? Yeah, this one's a little sketchy, but, I don't know, there could be some pattern – there could be some pattern that they detected at the molecular level. "Highly predictable." "Highly" is bothering me. It's – what do you mean by "highly"? Yeah, it's between one and three.

S: And, therefore....

B: And therefore, all right. I'm going to go with the microgravity. 35% just seems like too much.

S: OK.

E: Oooh.

R: It's all right. Hedge your bets.

J: Well, OK. Number two I have no reason to doubt—the one about the feathered dinosaurs. The one about the evolutionary changes can be highly predictable? I'm curious what you mean by "evolutionary changes". I mean, are you saying that they can predict—and I know you're not going to answer this, but I'm questioning—can they predict that a mutation is going to occur, or are they predicting what the evolutionary change is going to be? Am I crazy in asking that question?

S: No. I'm not going to answer it, but you can ask.

(''laughter'')

J: So, I think that they can predict that there's going to be a mutation. I don't think that they can predict what that mutation is going to be. And I think that that's vague, and I'm not going to take that one. I'm going to go with the one about the astronauts as being the fake for a couple of reasons: One, 35% does seem like an awful lot. I do think that that would mean that some heart – some astronauts would have had heart attacks, and I've never heard of an astronaut having a heart attack.

R: Really?

J: Have you?

R: I don't really look into it that much.

J: Well, there you go. That's it. I'm done.

S: All right. So, very quickly, let's see if they changed your mind. Who in the audience—again, applaud again—who thinks the astronauts is the fiction?

(''applause'')

R: Definitely more.

S: Feathered dinosaurs?

(''two or three people applaud'')

S: Thank you. And, evolution being predictable?

(''applause'')

E: Ooh.

J: We've had a major swing, Steve.

R: They split!

E: Might be a little (''inaudible'')

S: I think we swung them to number one!

R: Yeah.

S: But I can't convince anybody that this feathered dinosaur thing is fiction.

J: These two people here!

S: "Scientists have discovered the first feathered dinosaur –

R: You got these guys! What, are they (''inaudible'')

S: They're nobody.

(''laughter'')

S: – in the western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers." And that one is science.

(''groans'')

S: Sorry. I do appreciate it, but that was science.

J: Boring! Who cares?

R: So you guys do suck, though.

(''groans'')

R: No, I'm kidding! I'm kidding.

S: No, they were brave. They were willing to go out there and give it a chance.

J: Right, did you really even have to read that one? Just come on.

S: Imagine if they were right! All right –

E: Yeah, right?

S: – so, the scientist is Darla Zelenitsky. She discovered—and her team—an Ornithomimus dinosaur—which is in the group the ''ornithomimids'', and that is a group of theropods—and it is the first feathered dinosaur in that group, and it was discovered in Alberta, Canada, so it's the first western hemisphere feathered dinosaur. Found three specimens, an adult and two juveniles. The juveniles have just downy feathers all over their body. The adult has the downy feathers but also has, you know, mature feathers and some partially-developed wings. So, it seems like the adults developed these proto-wings, probably not having anything to do with flight –

B: Mating.

S: – something that adults do that children don't do. Maybe something to do with mating, for example. And remarkably well-preserved. So, it increases also the number of different kinds of sediments in which feathered dinosaurs – the evidence of feathers can be found. So it's the first one in the western hemisphere, first of this kind of fossil find, and the first ornithomimid with feathers. Very interesting finding. All right. Let's go on to – I guess we'll go to number one: "A new study finds that astronauts who have spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% increased risk of heart attacks and strokes." Bob and Jay think this is the fiction, and they convinced a lot of the audience, and this one is the fiction.

(''applause'')

S: All right.

J: Thank you.

R: Good job. Good job.

S: So, I made that up.

(''laughter'')

E: The whole thing?

S: The real news item that inspired that is only tangentially related. What the study found was the explanation—or an explanation—for why astronauts who spend time in microgravity develop a condition known as orthostatic hypotension. What that means is that when you go from, say, lying down to a sitting or a standing position, normally your blood vessels would contract, would raise your blood pressure, maintain your blood pressure so that you don't pass out, you don't get lightheaded. But if you have orthostatic hypotension then, upon standing, your vessels don't contract to compensate, your blood pressure drops –

B: You get lightheaded.

S: – profusion to the brain decreases, you can get lightheaded or even to the point of passing out. Astronauts develop this very commonly after a short stay in microgravity, and almost always if they've been in microgravity for a long time. The explanation for this is that spending time in microgravity impairs the ability of the vessels to contract, apparently because they don't have to, so they just sort of get lazy, and they – whatever feedback mechanism is there to tell those blood vessels to contract, you know, doesn't function for a while, and then, almost like the body has to relearn that reflex once they're back in gravity. So, didn't seem that surprising a finding, but that's what they found. All right, number three: "Researchers find that, at the molecular level, evolutionary changes can be highly predictable." And that one is science. That was definitely the ringer. What the scientists showed – they looked at different insect species, but in many different groups of insects—so, insects separated by three hundred million years of evolutionary history. Insects have been around for a long time—and what they found was that insects which eat a certain kind of plant that produces a certain kind of poison all evolved one of a very few number of possible molecular solutions to eating that poison, even though they were completely separated along different evolutionary paths. And what they said is, essentially, if there is a limited number of solutions to a problem at the molecular level, that one of those changes will occur in an evolutionary line is actually – becomes highly predictable, that you could predict that, even if they're completely separated evolutionarily on different branches, separated by hundreds of millions of years of evolution, they're going to evolve the exact same mutation in the same protein that gives them the same ability to tolerate that toxin. So, the – at least on that level, the evolutionary changes become predictable. And they said – they thought that it was predictable to a surprising degree, is how the scientists characterized that. So, that was interesting, but, you know, it does make sense, if there's only so many solutions to a problem, evolution's probably going to hit upon one of those solutions independently, over and over again, in multiple different lines. We do see that type of convergent evolution. They were just talking about it on the molecular level. So, good work, Bob and Jay. You did a good job.

J: Thank you.

R: Well done.

(''applause'')

S: And well done to much of the audience.

== Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:08:11) ==
<blockquote>Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.</blockquote>
J: Paul Kurtz!

{{Outro1}}

== References ==
<references/>

{{Navigation}}

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-17T13:55:02Z

Cornelioid: /* Science or Fiction (55:19) */ transcript up to 1:09:58

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|episodeDate = 3rd November 2012 
|episodeIcon = File:KurtzPic2.jpg 
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|guest1 = RW: Richard Wiseman
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|qowText = Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality. 
|qowAuthor = [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] 
|}}

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

RW: – a live edition of my favorite podcast and radio show. So, we're going to have Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Jay Novella, Even Bernstein, and – and a woman –

(''laughter'')

RW: – join us. It's the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe!

(''applause'')

S: Hello, and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

(''applause'')

S: Today is Thursday, October 25th, 2012, and we are live from [http://www.csiconference.org/ CSICon 2012].

(''applause'')

Joining me, as always, are Bob Novella –

B: Hey everybody!

(''cheers'')

S: – Rebecca Watson –

R: Hello, everyone!

(''cheers'')

''audience member'': I love you, Rebecca!

R: I love you, too!

S: – Jay Novella...Jay Novella –

J: Wooooo! Rebecca, yeah!

(''cheers'')

R: I love you, Jay!

S: – and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hello, Nashville!

(''cheers'')

S: So, how're you guys doing? How do you like Nashville?

J: It's awesome. I didn't – I thought people were going to literally be playing guitar when I got off the airplane.

B: Oh, come on, Jay.

S: Yeah, in the airport, you know?

J: Yeah.

== This Day in Skepticism (1:28) ==
November 3, 1957 Sputnik 2 launched

S: So, Rebecca, you always start us off with a This Day in Science and Skepticism. This show will be going up on November 3rd, so, did anything happen that day?

R: Nope.

(''laughter'')

B: Ever?

R: Oh, all right. One thing happened. One thing happened! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_2 Sputnik 2] happened.

S: ''Sputnik 2: The Revenge''.

(''laughter'')

R: ''Son of Sputnik''.

S: ''Son of Sputnik''.

J: ''Son of Sputnik''!

R: That's right. Sputnik 2 you might know as "the one that killed the puppy".

(''awwws'')

R: No? Aww, that's weird, 'cause I really thought that this would go over well at a live event! Yeah, Sputnik 2 is the craft that took Laika into orbit, Laika being the Soviet space dog who became the first animal in orbit—for about, like, 10 minutes, before she died.

E: Well, you know –

S: A couple of hours. It was a couple of hours. They thought he was going to survive for about ten days –

R: I think she's a "she".

S: – ''she'' was going to survive –

E: Eh.

R: Get it right, Steve!

S: You know, asexual Russian names, I mean, come on. But, they thought that Laika was going to survive for about ten days, but then they had a little mishap with the cooling system, and –

E: Oops.

S: Yeah. – got a little hot in the capsule—104 degrees, they said in (''inaudible'')

E: That'd be a hot dog. Yep.

(''groans'')

B: Oh, come on. My god.

E: Thank you. I'll be here all the weekend.

R: How – can we just take a moment, just to take a poll of the audience: How are our dead dog jokes doing? Good?

J: Yes!

(''applause'')

R: OK. All right. Yeah.

J: You know what? I didn't know until we researched this item that it was a one-way mission.

R: Yeah.

E: Mm-hmm.

J: That's really nasty.

S: Well, the capsule returned.

(''laughter'')

E: Yeah, well –

S: About 162 days later, it burned up in the atmosphere. But, yeah, they never intended to bring Laika back.

J: No, they actually were going to euthanize her with poison food after the tenth day, I think, right?

R: This is seriously the worst item ever. What was I thinking when I picked it?

S: There – there's Laika.

E: Aww. Aww.

R: Oh yeah! I didn't pick it! Steve forced me to!

E: But, we'd never know who this dog was if it didn't go on Sputnik 2, right? I mean, this would be an otherwise – another animal.

R: No, yeah, and I'm sure Laika appreciates the fame she gets from ''beyond the grave''.

E: She got her fifteen minutes.

== In Memorium ==
=== Paul Kurtz (3:45) ===
* 1925-2012

S: Well, we are going to start the new segment of the show with an ''in memoriam''. We do like to, on the ''Skeptic's Guide'', pause to remember those members of the skeptical community who have passed, and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] died several days ago, just the day before the organizers were coming down to the conference. He died on Sunday. He was 85 years old. It was 1925 to 2012, so that is 86. I can do math. (''audience laughter'') You'll know why i was confused in a moment.

R: 'Cause you're terrible at math?

S: Yes. So, before we get the show started, Ron Lindsay and Kendrick Frazier talked about Paul Kurtz. You know, he was one of the giants of the skeptical movement, of the skeptical community. You know, he was largely responsible for organizing the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, founding Prometheus Books, CFI, [http://www.secularhumanism.org/ Secular Humanism]. He was an academic, a philosopher. He really gave a lot of weight to the movement early on. He made it to that – he broke it to that next level. It wasn't that, you know, before he came on board. So he has to be remembered for that. We did have some interactions with Paul along the years. The first year that we started – (''audience cooing'')

R: Baby Steve!

E: Aww.

S: I was a little younger back then.

R: He's three years old there.

B: He's only half-grey there.

S: (''laughing'') I'm only half-grey!

E: A little less grey, yep.

S: You can mark my age by my greyness up until about ten years ago, when i went totally grey. Right when we got started, in 1996, you know, CSICOP, now CSI, you know, they were the big national skeptical organization. They'd definitely – They took us under their wing, you know, gave us their support, their local membership list, so that we could get our movement going. And i remember meeting Paul at the first World Skeptics Conference, and he was immediately—like, you know, your grandfather—like, you know, very, very comfortably took on that air of being a mentor. It's like, "Yeah, this is great. You're welcome to the skeptical movement." So i definitely remember him fondly in that way. A few years later, Paul organized a meeting of the local skeptical groups. In the picture here you can see me again with Bob, Perry, and Evan. The four of us came up together –

J: Now, if i remember correctly, Rebecca, you and i were off being badass somewhere else, right?

R: I think that's what was happening, yeah.

S: – and, i think, in the foreground, that's Colonel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Nickell Joe Nickell], isn't it?

E: Colonel.

S: Yeah, he had broke his leg in Spain, or something?

R: Round of applause for Colonel Joe Nickell!

E: I remember that.

(''applause'')

S: Joe actually is going to come up, and he's going to read a poem that he wrote, i believe, about Paul.

JN: Paul was a great supporter of the arts, and i hope he would have liked this. The poem is called "Book of Seasons: An elegy". (''Uncertain re: permission to reproduce poem'')

S: Thank you, Joe.

=== Leon Jaroff (7:34) ===
* 1926-2012

S: This same weekend, Saturday before the show, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_(magazine) Leon Jaroff] also died. ''He'' was 85, hence my confusion. So, Leon Jariff—not a big name in the skeptical community recently, and if you ask, you know, people at conventions like this if they knew who he was – I mean, in fact, right before the show Rebecca said to me, "Who's Leon Jaroff?"

R: (''indignant gasp'')

S: Sorry, Rebecca.

(''audience laughter'')

S: But he was perhaps one of the most skeptical journalists that we have had.

B: Yeah.

S: He was the science columnist for ''Time Magazine''. It was he who said, "You know, popularizing science is important, you know, we should start a science-dedicated magazine." And that was ''Discover Magazine''. That was him. He was not afraid to be a hard-nosed skeptic when writing about scientific issues. So, for example, when writing about chiropractors, [http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,213482,00.html he wrote],

<blockquote>
Chiropractors also employ a bewildering variety of weird practices to diagnose their patients. Some use applied kinesiology, a muscle test that supposedly can diagnose allergies and diseased organs. Hair analysis and iris readings are commonplace in the profession. Even sillier are many of the treatments that chiropractors use and recommend: homeopathic potions, colon irrigation, magnetic therapy, enzyme pills, colored-light therapy, and something called "balancing body energy," among other mystical procedures with undocumented effects.
</blockquote>

S: That's from a mainstream journalist writing in ''Time Magazine''. Do we see this kind of thing today? I don't think so.

B: Nope.

(''audience applause'')

S: So, you know, we do have to, I think, also note the support that Jaroff gave to such a good science journalism, and that kind of hard-nosed, skeptical science journalism is definitely something we miss. That's a void that, I think, that we in the skeptical community have to fill, but, unfortunately, it is a void.

== News Items ==
=== Big Bang Conference at CERN (9:31)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19870036 Big Bang and religion mixed in Cern debate]

S: Rebecca –

R: Yes!

S: – this is a different quote. It's not as good a quote.

<blockquote>
Science in isolation is great for producing stuff, but not so good for producing ideas.
</blockquote>

R: Mm-hmm.

S: Who said that?

R: That was said by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Pinsent Andrew Pinsent] at the Ramsey Center for Science and Religion. What I particularly liked about this quote is that it is completely reversed – it is the exact opposite of what I would have suggested.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I would say that science is actually really good at ideas, but, in order to produce stuff, you have to add something else. You know, like, they might be able to figure out lasers, but to make a CD player you need a marketing executive.

S: Or death ray.

R: Thank you. Yeah, of course. Why didn't I go there first?

(''laughter'')

R: Yeah, so, this quote comes from a recent article that the BBC produced: "Big Bang and religion mixed in CERN debates". Apparently, there was a conference recently that CERN held—you remember CERN, you know, the guys who, apparently, may have found –

J: Higgs!

R: – the Higgs boson.

S: A boson with Higgs-like properties.

R: A Higgs-like thing.

S: Boson, yeah.

R: A Higgish. I like "Higgish" –

B: "Higgish"?

R: – a little bit.

J: (''laughing'') "A little bit!"

S: "Higgy"?

B: (''singing, inaudible'') ''Higgy again."

R: So, yes. Apparently, I don't know the purpose – I don't know what, who dreamt this up, but what I'm thinking is that someone was concerned that they may have found a particle that many people know as the "God particle", and, so, they're concerned that they're going to be excommunicated or, you know, that people will rebel—religious people will rebel—against science. Basically, we'll have some sort of Dark Ages–esque thing happening, and, so, maybe somebody at CERN thought, "Well, we should have this conference where we talk about how religious people should be OK with the Higgs boson."

B: Mm-hmm.

R: So, those are the good intentions that I'm assuming are behind this conference that has speakers such as this. The quotes in here are pretty fun, and none of them have any amount of intelligence to them. Steve, you're the one who brought this one to my attention here –

S: Yes.

R: I'm interested in what – we've talked a little bit before about things like the Templeton Foundation, which is an organization that gives out a prize – gives out prizes to people who can explore science in a religious context, basically. And I'm a bit opposed to it. I feel like it's muddying the waters. I think we don't ''need'' to bring religion into what people are doing at CERN.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I think those two things are happily separated, but I'm interested in knowing your feelings on this.

S: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think trying to introduce theology into science is misguided. You know, this conference was specifically about the origin of the universe. So, it's not just about scientific issues in particular. I think the thinking, at least on the part of the theologians who were quoted about this conference, is that, well, you're talking about the origin of the universe. That's a really big question, and religion is about answering the really big questions—not science. Science is narrow and reductionist, and makes stuff, but can't really grapple with the big questions of our origins. And that's exactly incorrect, as you were saying. That's a complete knock to science. I mean, science is, in fact, the only human intellectual endeavor that ''can'' answer any empirical question about the origin of the universe.

R: Yeah.

J: So, was the conference, though, the scientists trying to appease religious people? The saying that –

R: Well, you know, apparently, this was – the conference was done on the part of CERN, according to BBC, and that's what I find troubling. I'm totally OK with a conference that religious people host, you know, and the topic might be "How do we –" you know, "How do we consider our theology now that we know ''X'', ''Y'', and ''Z''—now that science has discovered this? What does that mean for ''our'' belief system?" And I think that's fine, but, you know, apparently, the theologians who were there seem to think that this was a chance to ''debate'' the scientists –

J: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

R: – and, no! Why would you do that? Debate is completely the opposite direction of where you want to go.

S: It also – I mean, the quotes seem to me like a desperate grasp at relevance, trying to make it seem like they're – you know, that theology is still relevant to questions about origins of the universe, when, in fact, science has completely displaced it from that endeavor.

J: So, did it end up with, like, a fistfight? Like, what happened?

(''laughter'')

E: Science won.

R: I haven't found any evidence of any arrests, so, apparently –

S: There were no fisticuffs?

J: That really must've been awkward as hell, though, right? Like, they're like, sitting there, like, after a whole day, and they're like, "Uh, OK, it's over now."

E: Something tells me they're not going to be doing this again. They're going to learn from this.

S: I don't know.

R: Well, I mean, it's actually not even – like, I wish it had been that exciting. But, instead, it just seems like it was really ''boring'' –

E: Yeah.

R: – and nobody came to ''any'' conclusions. Because you ''can't'', you know?

S: Yeah.

R: You're just having a discussion of, like, well, you know, "But what don't we know?"

=== Italian Earthquake Scientists Convicted (14:57)===
* [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/22/us-italy-earthquake-court-idUSBRE89L13V20121022 Italian scientists convicted over earthquake warning]

S: Now, we're trying to keep – we like to keep our live shows really light –

(''laughter'')

E: So far, so good.

S: So, we thought we'd talk about a horrible earthquake that killed over three hundred people.

E: Yeah, let's go there.

R: Good intro. Good intro there.

S: But there's actually a better story embedded in that. There were six Italian scientists, who were recently convicted of manslaughter –

B: Yeah.

S: – for failure to properly communicate the warnings about the upcoming L'Aquila earthquake in 2009. Yeah, we've been following this story, you know, since it happened. The quick version is that there were a number of small tremors in this very earthquake-prone part of Italy, and the geologists—the local geologists—you know, were following it. And their opinion was that, well, these tremors are very common. Most such tremors are not followed by major quakes. Most major quakes are not preceded by these kinds of tremors. So, the probability of a major quake occurring is not particularly higher, you know, now, just because of these tremors, than at any time, and, therefore, there's no cause for alarm. Now, they were specifically asked during a press conference, "Should we panic?" You know, "Should we evacuate?" And they said "No. There's no reason to evacuate. Stay at home and drink a glass of wine."

B: Steve, was this about a year ago that we covered this?

S: 2009. 2009 –

B: Oh, wow. (''inaudible'')

S: – so, was the quake, and then the court trial started about a year ago, and now the decision came down that the six scientists were convicted to six years – I think six years in prison and something like, you know, millions of dollars in damages for manslaughter—for the deaths of the people who didn't evacuate because they – of their reassurances that there was nothing to be worried about.

R: That's horrific.

J: Well, i, you know, to play devil's advocate real quick, if there was true negligence—like, if they didn't follow through with things that they needed to do, if they did a terrible job at analyzing the data, in a fashion that – where the data could have been analyzed better, or they actually weren't asking their peers for the information—i can understand if there was extreme negligence.

S: Right.

J: But, even still, like, that's very hard to prove, and I just don't understand –

S: Well, I mean, not really. The question is, was their opinion within the standard for their profession? That's—in my opinion—that's the only real question here. You can't be blamed for being wrong, right? You can't be blamed for a bad outcome if you were following the standard. Now, of course, scientists can't predict earthquakes. You can't predict when an earthquake is going to occur. That's the bottom line. What – every statement they said was truthful, you know, every factual statement. "These tremors do not necessarily mean that there's an earthquake coming, and they are not a reason to evacuate. We don't evacuate every city where there's tremors because there might be a major quake, because it's not that predictive." So, that was not negligent. No, and they weren't really being accused of negligence. They were basically being accused of poorly communicating to the public. It seems to be based on a lot of false premises about what scientists ''can know''—what an expert about, you know, an earthquake, a geologist, expert ''can know''.

R: Yeah, they've been convicted for not using a magical power they don't have.

S: Yeah.

R: They might as well have convicted all the psychics in Italy for not accurately predicting this earthquake.

J: I think we need to be careful—i don't disagree, of course. I don't think that these men should be going to jail for this at all—but it is an important thing to state that, I think, people should go to prison, or get in trouble ''legally'', if they are misrepresenting science or – right? So you see where I'm going with this.

S: Well, yeah. If you are –

J: If you're setting that premise—you're saying, "Hey, these guys screwed up, they didn't do what they were supposed to do, they didn't communicate to us the real possible outcomes here", whatever—and, like –

S: Yeah.

J: – I'll reiterate, I don't think that they should be going to jail—

B: Well, I don't agree –

J: —but, I do think, though, that that standard that that court set needs to be applied all the way down the ladder.

B: Yeah, but, Jay, like, someone saying that "I have a cure for cancer and it's scientifically proven" but it's a sham?

J: Exactly, right? So, if they're going to actually take those scientists out and say "You're done. You're not performing science anymore and you're going to jail for that bad decision or information you gave", well, hello! Then, you know, all of a sudden, a million lawsuits need to be filed.

S: But, it wasn't – to clarify, though, it wasn't ''bad'', it was just ''unlucky''. I mean, doctors encounter this all the time, you know. You are asked to decide, you know, what tests to order, what diagnoses a patient might have. There's a whole lot of liability involved with that. You can't be convicted of malpractice just because of a bad outcome if what you did was within the standard of care.

B: Right.

S: So, was the information they were giving to the public within the standard for the profession? If the answer is "yes", the fact that there was a low-probability earthquake the next week is not their fault.

E: Right.

S: It doesn't change the fact – you know, if they're saying there's a 99% chance that there's not going to be an earthquake, and then the 1% thing happens, they were still right –

J: Yeah.

S: – in saying that it was unlikely.

R: Yeah.

E: Didn't the evidence show, basically, that they performed correctly, essentially? They did not –

S: That's the consensus. I mean, so, there's worldwide outrage, especially among the scientific community (''inaudible'') –

B: This has got to be shot down in a higher court.

S: Yeah.

B: This can't – can't possibly stand.

E: I hope so.

S: Well, there's two appeals left. There's two appeals, and they will stay out of prison before those appeals. So, the United States National Academy of Science, the Royal Academy of Science—the Royal Society, rather—issued a joint statement saying that "that is why we must protest the verdict in Italy. If it becomes a precedent in law, it could lead to a situation in which scientists will be afraid to give expert opinion."

J: Yeah, that's devastating.

E: Mm-hmm.

S: So, it would have a chilling effect. What – you know, what geologist is going to, you know, talk to the public in Italy now, if you could wind up in jail and, you know, financially devastated, and your career devastated, because you can't predict the future, you know, because you don't have a crystal ball? It's insane. It's insane.

J: Yeah. To think that they're going after these scientists, and they're not going after the rampant quackery throughout –

S: Well, there's that, too.

E: I wonder how much pressure they came under from, like, the families, the survivors, of this terrible, terrible devastation –

J: Oh yeah, they had to hang someone.

E: – and I imagine they put a lot of pressure on politicians and other people in order to hold ''somebody'' accountable.

J: They have to. They had to send someone down the river for that.

B: Did they have a trial?

S: Yeah.

B: Did they have witnesses and experts coming in?

S: Yeah. Yep.

B: I'd love to know the details of what exactly happened, because how could –

(''laughter'')

S: So, we'll see if the worldwide backlash has an effect. I mean, again, they do have two appeals left, so we'll definitely follow it.

=== Whale Makes Human Sounds (21:35)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20026938 Beluga whale 'makes human-like sounds']

S: All right, Rebecca, so, we have a cute animal –

R: Thank you.

S: – we're going to talk about now.

J: This is a happy one!

R: Just tell me this narwhal or whatever is alive.

S: It's a whale.

E: It's alive and well.

S: It's a beluga whale.

B: It sort of looks like a narwhal.

R: Tell me this beluga is alive!

E: That's NOC the beluga. They're very much alive.

R: It's not a beluga?

E: "NOC". N-O-C.

S: "NOC". NOC the beluga.

R: Oh! "That's NOC."

(''laughter'')

R: I was about to say, "No, ''that is a beluga''."

S: Sounds like a children's song.

E: It does sound like a children's –

S: Evan, sing it.

E: No.

S: OK.

J: Don't change it! Please don't –

E: If my daughter was here, maybe. But, no. So, what's important about NOC the beluga? Well, OK, so, picture this: You are part of the National Marine Mammal Foundation, OK, and you're in the tank, swimming around with the whales and stuff, and, all of a sudden, you hear somebody—you hear a voice—call your name. Something to the effect that – "Get out of the water! Get out of the water!" So, you're in the tank and you come up and you say, "OK, who told me to get out of the water? Who told me to get out of the water?" And the other scientists and people are looking around you like, "Nobody? What the heck are you talking about?" And, he's like, "Well, I definitely ''heard'' that!" Well, what did he actually hear? Well, apparently, NOC the beluga made some noises very reminiscent of human noises. Beluga whales are, you know, incredible creatures. Their calls – They're known as the canaries of the sea. They have a very high-frequency, high-pitched tone to their noises that they make, but they make lots of different kinds of noises. They can emit up to eleven different kinds of sounds—crackles, whistles, trills, squawks—all sorts of things. But, it's been rumored that these whales can emit noises that sound like humans talking. And, for the first time, they've actually recorded NOC the whale making these noises, and they have it on tape. And we have it on tape.

R: Nah.

(''NOC makes unnervingly human-sounding noises'')

R: Did he maybe just swallow a kazoo?

(''laughter'')

J: Everybody has a drunk neighbor that makes those noises.

(''laughter'')

E: Oh, gosh. Who knows what the heck he was saying? You know, dolphins have been taught to mimic noises that kind of sound like human voices, but, before this, there's been no record of an animal ''spontaneously'' coming up and making these kinds of noises. This is the first evidence, the first hard evidence we have of it.

R: Here's – I have a theory. I have a theory. I have a theory that – so, whales, in general, are incredibly intelligent –

E: Oh yeah.

R: – possibly as smart as us, but they don't want thumbs, or any way to talk to us –

E: Or fire.

R: – and I feel like they do, basically – That's true. No, I saw Spongebob once. There was fire under the sea. I think it can be done.

S: Yep, but they don't have nanotechnology, though.

R: They don't. So, my theory is that whales are basically, like – they have – it's like they have locked-in syndrome, you know? Where they're just –

J: Oh, no.

R: – super-intelligent, and there's all these people around them, and they're just messing with them –

J: So, he was screaming, actually –

R: Yeah! And, so, he's been like, his whole life, he's been in this stupid little – like, he's in captivity, right? So, he's been in this stupid little aquarium, and he's just, like, "I hate all of you! And I'm going to will myself to tell you, because you're too stupid to understand!"

E: So, basically, what's going on here is, the whale has learned to change – rapidly change pressure within its naval cavity in order to create these sounds. And, it hasn't – the whale is able to over-inflate what's known as its vestibular sac in its blowhole, which is normally acts to stop water from basically coming in. So, the whale is going through a lot of, you know, effort, essentially, to try to make these noises. And I'm sure they're going to be trying to figure out exactly, you know, basically, ''why'' is the whale doing this?

S: Well, he just – this whale was – did spend his life in captivity –

E: Yeah.

S: – so, he did hear human speech a lot, and maybe he's just, to some extent, mimicking the sounds that he grew up hearing his whole life.

J: It's definitely – it definitely has a human sound to it, in the cadence and everything.

S: Yeah.

J: I mean, he's intelligent enough to mimic a human, which is really cool.

R: Yeah.

J: And, then, you always think, you know, if he can mimic a human—if his brain is advanced that much—you know, maybe he –

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But, is he mimicking humans or making fun of humans? You know, like people make fun of other languages?

R: Yeah, he's just like "Weh! Weh! Weh! This is what you sound like!"

E: Yeah. You stupid bald monkey and (''inaudible'')! Get out of here!

B: Sounds like a false dichotomy.

=== PANDAS Controversy (26:18)===
* [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/a-pandas-story/ A PANDAS Story]

S: So, we're going to talk about – going from talking about beluga whales to talking about PANDAS! Except, we're not talking about pandas, because we're talking about –

E: Wait.

R: Stop toying with my emotions, Steve!

S: I had to put a cute picture of a panda up there for you, Rebecca. We are talking about pediatric autoimmune –

R: It makes sense.

S: – neuropsychiatric disorder associated with –

E: I didn't know PANDA was an acronym. Cool!

R: Steve, I miss the panda.

S: – streptococcal infection—or, PANDAS. See? There's a panda.

(''laughter, cooing'')

E: Aww!

R: Yay.

S: We're talking about PANDAS –

E: Aww.

R: Boo.

J: Oh.

E: That's worse.

S: – which is a legitimately controversial medical diagnosis! So, essentially, what happens is, children suddenly develop ticks—like Tourette syndrome—and psychiatric disorders—obsessive–compulsive disorder—and it is thought that, in some cases, that it is actually – the inciting event is an infection—bacteria—streptococcal infection. Now, of course, it's always difficult to establish the reality of a new disease. Unless you get all your ducks in a row, and all the, you know, pathology all adds up, it's sometimes difficult to identify a legitimate new syndrome and to prove that – cause and effect. So, correlation is one thing. As we know, correlation is not ''necessarily'' causation. And, so, the syndrome exists. There are – the number of physicians who have identified the sudden onset psychiatric – neuropsychiatric disorder, and in some cases it is temporally associated with a streptococcal infection. But that's not the same thing as saying that the strep infection ''caused'' the neuropsychiatric syndrome. So, that's – and there's the controversy. Now, of course, we live in the modern Internet age. So, as soon as a scientist says, "I think that there's this syndrome—I want to call it PANDAS—and – sort of, you know, a psychiatric syndrome provoked by a bacterial infection", of course, there are now support groups, and there's groups on the Internet, and there's patient groups supporting this diagnosis before the science is even settled. And, then, of course, once that happens, when you try to do more science, or have any kind of discussion about whether or not this is a real syndrome, you have parents and patient groups and advocacy groups, you know, calling you all kinds of nasty names and saying there's a conspiracy against people with PANDAS, it's all the insurance companies and Big Pharma and evil doctors or whatever. So, that's the situation that we're in the middle of right now, unfortunately, is that, before the science is settled, you know, there's the scientific controversy, then there's the public controversy. This came to the media attention recently because of a 16-year-old girl called Elizabeth Wray. She developed, you know, a syndrome like PANDAS with ticks and psychological disorders, was diagnosed by a physician with PANDAS, and then was transferred to Boston's Children's Hospital for – presumably for further treatment of PANDAS. Now, the story that is going around the PANDAS community is that once she got to Boston University—or Boston Children's Hospital—she was told – the parents were told, "We don't believe that PANDAS is real – that it exists", and then they essentially admitted their daughter to the psychiatric unit and started treating her with psychiatric medications. Now, I don't know if that's true, because the doctors and the hospital are not telling their side of the story because of patient confidentiality. So, we don't know what their side of the story is. We only know the parents' side of the story, filtered through the PANDAS community. Unfortunately, now there's – this story has taken on a life of its own. There's a Free Elizabeth Wray movement going on within the PANDAS community, they're telling all kinds of horror stories about Boston Children's Hospital, and, you know, we can't verify any of it. What's interesting in reading about it is that each side has their narrative—and I wrote about this on Science-Based Medicine—because one of the things that – the ideas that we're wrestling with in the skeptical community is that—well, all right, we have, I think, a good approach to critical thinking, we understand a lot about self-deception, about the nature of science and pseudoscience—but we don't always have a good story to tell the public, or we have a hard time convincing mainstream outlets that we have – that our story is an interesting and good one. You know, we have to really market our narrative—the skeptical narrative. When you read about stories like this, the PANDAS proponents have a really compelling emotional narrative. It may be total B.S.—i don't know—but it's very compelling. They have a story of a child suffering from an unusual disease, parents who just want to do what's right for her—I believe all those things are correct—and then they are, essentially, being abused by a dismissive and skeptical medical establishment who doesn't believe in this disease, and that is treating their child with perhaps harmful, you know, psychiatric medications. They even – this went to court. Apparently, the hospital thought that the parents were being negligent in not allowing them to give proper standard of care—psychiatric treatment—to their child, and they wanted to have custody taken away from the parents, and they wanted to admit Elizabeth to a locked psychiatric ward—again, not sure – I can't verify those from the hospital's side of things. A judge – a Massachusetts judge essentially made her a ward of the state while they sorted out what was going on, but they did not grant the hospital their request to treat her in the way that they wanted to. So, they essentially just – the state took her out of everybody's hands for a moment – for the moment. So, it's interesting. Of course, the PANDAS community, again, is up in arms, you know. The court essentially took custody away from these parents that are only trying to do what's right for their daughter. But, of course, you could see the other narrative—you know, let's assume that the physicians think that—even if you think – whether or not you think PANDAS really exists—they think that she has a psychiatric illness, the parents are in denial, they're pursuing this false diagnosis, and they're, you know, refusing standard medical care. That's a story, too.

B: What if you just pulled out the whole strep association, and just treat it like a "pandisorder"? Is their beef that it's associated with strep, and they don't think there's any association? Why don't they just treat it like a neuropsychiatric disorder –

S: Yeah.

B: – and forget about the whole strep association?

S: Well, because the strep association would lead you to treat with things like antibiotics. So, that's the question: Should you treat it with antibiotics, or should you treat her like a psychiatric (''inaudible'') patient?

J: Why not both? I mean, why wouldn't you –

S: Well, she has had at least one round of antibiotics. You can also treat it like an autoimmune disease, with, like, intravenous globulin, for example. So, I mean, these are real medical questions. Do we treat it like an infection, do we treat it like a post-infectious auto-immune disease, or do we treat it like a psychiatric disorder? Those are real questions.

J: Steve, are you saying pandas don't exist? Let me just get this straight.

(''laughter'')

S: So, well, I did – to give a serious answer to your sarcastic question, I did –

R: My favorite kind.

S: – take the opportunity – I'm good that way. I'm good that way. I did take the opportunity just to familiarize myself with the PANDAS literature—again, I always emphasize, I'm no an expert in this, but I can read the literature and give my opinion like a science journalist—i think it's genuinely controversial. When I read the research, there's lots of – the ducks are not in a row. So, when you do things like treat kids who apparently have PANDAS with antibiotics in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, they don't necessarily improve. And, if you look for the antibodies that are supposed to be there, they don't necessarily correlate with the disease onset or with the existence of strep. So –

B: So, this is clearly not like autism and vaccines. It's just more complicated than that.

S: So, no. So, right. So, autism and vaccines, like, I would say, that's been studied enough to say that autism's – that autism is not caused by vaccines. We can say that. We can make the negative statement. I cannot make the negative statement that PANDAS does not exist, only that the research so far has not reached the threshold where we can agree that it does exist and that there is some actual negative data—there's some positive data, too—so it's legitimately controversial. It did remind me, though, of the chronic Lyme disease controversy—

R: Yeah.

S: —which is very common in New England—again, where they think that a number of symptoms, including neurological symptoms, can be caused by a bacterial infection and treated with antibiotics. And the same – there's a lot of overlap in those two communities, you know.

J: Steve, are you saying that the public has unrealistic expectations?

S: Well, I think – it's partly that. I mean, I think the public is uncomfortable with the uncertainty, and they like this sort of hero–villain narrative, so they paint the medical community as the villains, and—except for those maverick physicians who understand. They're Lyme-literate, or they understand PANDAS, so they're the heroes—and, then, the insurance companies don't want to pay for, you know, over-and-over recurrent courses of IV antibiotics, so they're the villains, you know. They're not—I'm not defending insurance companies, but sometimes they actually – sometimes they're right. They don't want to pay for things that are not science-based or evidence-based. So, it's complicated. And, you know, how do we – so, how do we deal with a child with this disorder when we don't know what the best scientific answer is—we don't know if it's autoimmune, infectious, or psychiatric? We just have to, you know, do the best we can—and there may be different physicians who would take different approaches—but to portray it as "PANDAS definitely exists. If you don't believe in it, you're dismissive and you're mean and evil, or you're protecting some kind of Big Pharma grant that you're getting"—they always bring that up—rather than saying, "You know, we really want to know the right answer, but we just haven't found it yet. It's still – it's legitimately controversial."

J: Yeah, I think what you're saying does confirm what I was thinking, is that the public wants an answer, science is not yet done figuring this one out, and –

S: Yeah. Like the earthquake one, right?

J: Yeah.

S: Sometimes the answer is, "We don't know yet", you know. "We need to do more research". In medicine, we have to make decisions with imperfect, you know, information, so, you know.

J: Wouldn't it be typical, too – like, let's say that this is happening over and over again –

S: Yeah.

J: – like, at some point, some doctors are going to come up with different ideas, they're going to try it out, you know. The trial-and-error process happens, and—i hate to say it, but—this girl is probably going to be one of the people that gets tested on with new ideas.

S: Well, I mean – well, if you're really testing then you should be doing a research protocol. If you're just applying the best knowledge that we have to an individual patient, that's – a certain amount of trial and error with that that's not really experimentation. So, there is a difference there. So, I don't know. The other interesting question that I'm kind of alluding to is, what role do the patient or the advocacy groups play? I think, a lot of times, that they are helpful in raising awareness for a disease or a disorder and raising funding, and advocating for patients. You know, I've seen, I think, there's a lot of very effective, very good patient advocacy groups out there. But, sometimes, they put their nickel down on a specific scientific answer, and that's not their job.

J: Yeah.

S: It's not their job to predict or demand that science give them the answer they want. And, you know, unfortunately, some people want the answer to be "an infection"—not "genes", not, you know, "We don't know".

J: Yeah. It's curable. That's the one they want.

S: Of course, who – that's the answer I would want to have! "It's something outside that is, you know, foreign, that can be cured, and that can reverse my child to the way that they were". Who – every parent wants that to be the answer, but sometimes you – you know, you have to step back from what you want and listen to the evidence. That's the – that's the scientist's, that's the physician's job, you know. You should just let them do their job, you know.

J: All right, so, I want to bring up a quick side point on this.

S: Yeah.

J: So, as an example, let's say, fifty years ago, let's say this was happening. What stance do you think the public would have differently than what we're seeing today?

S: It's the same, and this ''did'' happen fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, you know, she would be diagnosed with neurosyphilis—maybe not somebody who was sixteen, but that was the stand-in for what we now would, you know, the same subculture would diagnose with chronic Lyme. There were believers in that. There were physicians who believed in treatments like chelation therapy, you know, and science proved it wrong, and they said, "Well, we don't care, we're going to still do it. We're going to come up with – We're just going to keep coming up with special pleading and alternate theories, and form our own societies and our own – and just keep doing it, and say that it's all a conspiracy."

J: Mm-hmm.

S: So, but, I think that it's just the turnaround time is so much faster because of the Internet. Like, another example: CCSVI, right? The alleged blockage in the veins that drained blood from the brain, causing multiple sclerosis. It's that – that whole process—of Dr. Zamboni proposing this entity and a treatment, to it being researched, to it being refuted, to, you know, patient advocacy groups springing up and calling for conspiracies and calling for research and demanding that science give them the answer that they want—all has taken place within a few years. We've seen that cycle happen right before our eyes. So, the Internet is just making it happen a lot quicker and a lot bigger, I think. But it's always been this way.

J: So do you have any ideas on what we could do? Could the skeptical community do anything to help this (''inaudible'')?

S: Well, I think what we do is, we discuss the issue from a science, logical, critical thinking point of view, you know. We point out the role of science in this, and we, I think, we try to bring the public discourse to a level that can deal with it in a more productive way, rather than the conspiracy mongering, sort of lowest-common-denominator that it would otherwise sink to.

J: Yeah.

=== Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44)===
* pnd

S: Well, let's move on. Jay, we're talking about how the media presents stories about paranormal activities.

J: Yeah, this is interesting. So, a professor decided to—Professor Brewer decided that—because what we're seeing over the years is a very obvious interest, in the general public, to news articles, and to TV shows, that talk about ghosts—and, you know, we've all seen the ''Ghost Hunter'' TV show—and, to people like us, at best, we watch it, and it's fun, right? 'Cause it's ridiculous and entertaining, and we like to see people from our perspective—a skeptical perspective—they're acting foolishly. But, there are a lot of people that are watching this, and they're riveted. Like, they really love it and they think a lot of it's real—and, I'm sure, to a certain degree, I can't say everyone that watches it and thinks everything about it is real—but, in the end, there's a huge entertainment factor there, and, unfortunately, to us skeptics, we feel like there's a lot of people that simply believe it, and that's their favorite entertainment. And I know a lot of people—I'm friends with a lot of people—that literally have active discussions on Facebook all the time, that I dip into, that are talking about the latest TAPS show. It would be be, "Can you believe it?" and "I knew that place was haunted!", and they're like, you know, getting whooped up.

S: I don't get it. I just don't get it. Nothing happens!

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

R: That's not true! That's not true.

E: Like "Seinfeld", yeah.

S: But, I mean, but they never find a ghost.

R: Steve, Steve. Did you feel that?

(''laughter'')

R: That happens! That happens all the time.

(''applause'')

R: They feel so much.

J: The thing is, you know –

S: I want to see a [http://www.hark.com/clips/pnzwffccqk-10-people-witnessed-a-free-floating-full-torso-vaporous-apparition full, floating torso] drift across the camera lens. Then I'll be impressed.

B: I still won't believe it. (''inaudible'')

S: No, but at least it'll be entertaining.

J: A lot of the shows, though, they're all right on the cusp, you know, of the noise, right? They're always right on that cusp. They're always ''just'' seeing something, or something falls over, you know? Or there's a noise from upstairs, or whatever, and it's never – they never give you that, you know? You don't get that –

R: This, actually – this came up—tomorrow I'll be talking about the [http://paranormalroadtrip.org/ paranormal road trip] that I just went on with [http://www.jonronson.com/ Jon Ronson] and [http://richardwiseman.wordpress.com/ Richard Wiseman] that got us here—and, at one of the stops, we were at a – we did talk to someone in a "haunted museum", and she was telling us that "the ghost hunters were there, and it was very exciting because there was a noise in the attic, and there were steps (''step sounds'') even though nobody was up there, and so the ghost hunter ran over and climbed up the ladder and looked into the attic, and, just then, a lady, dressed all in white, came ''flying at him'', and he shrieked in horror and fell down the ladder, and it was all really dramatic", and we were just completely blown away, obviously. We were riveted –

E: Yeah, well.

R: – and we said, "We cannot ''wait'' to see that footage!"

(''groans'')

R: – and she said, "Actually, I mean, it was so good, they didn't actually get that on camera.

B: Darn it!

R: No, all the cameras were down in another room somewhere."

J: Yeah, of course.

E: Well.

S: That was like –

R: "There's literally no evidence of it", though. Yeah.

S: – Ed Warren. We were investigating Ed Warren. He told us this story of being in a haunted house, and they had a local news crew over there, and, like, for two hours, they videotaped things flying around the room, you know, like, I say, really impressive, you know, smoking-gun evidence of paranormal activity. We're like, "Great! Can we see that footage?"

E: Sure!

J: "Yeah!"

S: "You know what? They taped over it for the news segment later that night."

(''laughter'')

S: Go figure. Stupid news crew.

J: So, I – I'm going to ask a couple of questions that I want you guys to not answer right now, but just think about it, 'cause these are pretty obvious questions, but I think they're interesting. "Why do people believe, or like to believe, in the paranormal? What's the attraction?" It's an interesting question if you think about it. There are people that ''really'' seek it out and love it. And there's something exciting about it. There's something kind of visceral about it. To my mind—to a skeptical mind—I don't have a connection to it. I just don't see what that allure is, other than, maybe—because I do like horror movies, and I do like to get scared. I love being actually scared sitting in a movie theater. It doesn't happen that often, but when it does happen it's very thrilling—and, maybe they're just having a lot of those thrilling moments. It's easier for them to get scared.

R: But, also, I mean, don't you think, maybe, it's got something to do with the fact that, maybe, we're not going to rot in the ground and die and never see our loved ones again...? Maybe?

J: Maybe? It's – you know, I'm not going to say no, but when I think about it, there's something thrilling about it. I'm not thinking, as I'm being thrilled in a horror movie, "Oh, I'm defying death by being thrilled right now!" That's not happening. I'm just – there is something – it's like, you know, eating something really spicy that hurts.

S: Yeah, but to –

J: It hurts, but it's good at the same time, right?

E: Uh.

S: To a lot of people, definitely, you know, evidence of ghosts is evidence of the afterlife. That's the appeal.

R: Yeah, and when we talk to people who describe their own experiences often—they're talking about Grandma and Grandpa and whatnot coming back to them and telling them that it's all OK—you know, and they're very comforting messages –

E: Yeah, which is why –

S: They want a narrative.

E: Which is why they watch these shows. It reinforces these positions that these people have, you know, and they derive a certain, you know, need out of it.

J: I wonder, though, because those shows are ''so bad''! They're so bad. Can they really be, you know?

R: I mean, there's a lot of – No, no, no! Personally, I would derive a lot of happiness from knowing that my dearly beloved grandmother, who I adored when I was young—she died when I was young—I would get so much happiness knowing that she was just screwing around with asshole ghosthunters on TV. Just, like, brushing past them and then disappearing whenever the cameras come out you know? That would give me a lot of satisfaction, knowing that.

J: Well, maybe the skeptical version of it is watching a YouTube video of Hitchens just tearing some moron apart, right? That's our version of that?

E: That releases endorphins, yeah.

J: 'Cause that makes me believe in something, right?

E: Yeah.

J: It gives me a thrill, but – OK, anyways. So, there is an article we're talking about here. So, Dr. Paul Brewer, who is – teaches at the University of Deleware, developed a study that was recently published in the journal ''Science: Communication'' that examines the influence of the media on the public's perception of the paranormal. So, here is his test: He took four news articles that were similar to each other, but they had significant differences in some of the details. The essence of it was, he had an article on one end of the spectrum that described a paranormal effect with a paranormal investigator, and they were using instruments to measure things, or whatever. And, then, as you go down to the fourth article, the fourth article gets very descriptive about using, you know, faux scientific language to make the paranormal investigators sound scientifically-minded, and using scientific tools. And, what he found was, the more of the faux science that was in the article, the more that the people believed that the paranormal accounts were true. You know, it's kind of a kick in the gut for us skeptics, because—and for us scientists, because—they're using our lingo, and our vernacular, and the way that we go about presenting data, and they're fooling people with it—because, I think, the general public is trained to a certain degree to recognize scientific language and recognize the formality of science—and they're using that—and I don't know how deliberate it is. Maybe they figured it out for the TV shows, that, you know, "hey, the more we B.S. this, the more we make this meter look cool and we throw in, you know, technical jargon, the more people that are going to be interested in our TV show"—

B: I think they also believe it themselves, Jay. They think they're being scientific.

J: Yeah.

E: That's right, yeah.

B: That's a big part of it as well.

E: You bet they do.

J: So, Brewer said it wasn't just any story about paranormal investigators that made people believe in ghosts and haunted houses. It was a story about how they were scientific. So, he puts a big emphasis on the science there. And, the good news was that he said that they might look at this and say, "Well, all it takes is this sprinkle of some acronyms in there, and wave around a cool-looking thing that beeps, and suddenly people believe in ghosts and haunted houses." Now, the one cool thing about his research was, he also found that if, at the end of the article, there was a skeptical disclaimer that said "This is the skeptical perspective. This is why that investigation was wrong. This is the mistakes that they made and this is why these instruments are bogus."—if they threw that in there—it actually made the people believe in the claims a lot less.

R: What?

J: Yeah, it actually worked.

R: The thing that we're always complaining about—that, like, one sentence that presents –

S: The token skeptic?

E: The token skeptic, yeah.

R: – the entirety of skeptical opinion—that actually does make a difference?

J: Well, I don't want to – I don't want to say that the token skeptic 30-second B.S. blurb that they cut on most of the TV shows that we see works. The way that he presented it, it seemed a little bit like it had more teeth. It wasn't a quick thing. I think it was a little bit more of a takedown.

S: So, there was a series of studies about ten years ago, where they looked at the same thing—at the presentation of pseudoscience in a documentary and its effect on people's belief in the subject matter, like belief in UFOs or alien visitation—and they found some similar things in that, when it was presented scientifically, that absolutely increased belief. They also found that if, at any point in time, it was said—there was any kind of disclaimer saying—the following claims are true, or that the following claims may or may not be true, or whatever—anything positive or negative—reduced belief, or reduced the increase in belief, following the segment. So, anything that triggered people's questioning about, is it true or is it not true, was actually a good thing. But they found the opposite in that the token skepticism at the end—a scientist coming in at the end and saying, you know, "We've evaluated this, and it's not true", ''increased'' belief in the thing, because it lent legitimacy to the whole enterprise—the very fact that a scientist was spending their time and giving their attention to it.

J: Oh, yeah.

S: So –

B: Is that a cultural change –

S: Well, maybe –

B: – or is it the study?

S: Well, all right. I don't know. I don't know what the answer to that is. But, one possible interpretation may be that the ''token'' ineffective skepticism actually has a negative effect in raising belief in the paranormal because it's lending false legitimacy, but if you give ''effective'', you know, analysis—

B: Yeah.

S: —effective skeptical analysis—maybe you could reverse that and bring it back down.

J: Yeah, from from what the article said, it was, I think, an equal paragraph on the skeptical perspective –

S: Yes.

J: – and, specifically –

S: We really do have to argue for equal time and for getting the skeptical position –

J: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

S: – not the talking head blurb token skepticism may not – may still be counterproductive.

J: And the thing that he said was that there was that the article, the paragraph, did a takedown of the people that were claiming to be scientists.

S: Mm-hmm.

J: So, it stripped their expertise away, in essence.

S: Yeah. Yeah.

J: So, you know, I think it's interesting. I think that we're hard-wired for these things. I find, unfortunately, more and more TV programs—hey, you guys noticing, what's with the reality TV? Like, why is reality TV taking over television? Have you asked yourself that question?

S: 'Cause it's cheap.

E: It's cheap.

S: It's cheap, yeah.

(''applause'')

== Live Q&A (51:06) ==
* Questions from the CSICon audience

S: OK, we do have a few minutes for some Q&A. If you want to ask us a question—you can ask us anything. We won't necessarily answer, but you can ask—

Q1: Rebecca, I hate to break this to you, but NOC the beluga died five years ago.

R: God damn it!

J: Aww.

(''groans'')

R: God damn it, Tim Farley!

J: Tim Farley!

Q2: On a more serious note, Jay, apropos of what you said, I'm waiting for the skeptics community to have some reaction to the television show [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Island_Medium ''The Long Island Medium''] –

J: Oh.

S: Yeah.

Q2: – especially when she has kids on the program and she's telling them that, you know, she's talking to their dead parent.

J: Yeah, yeah. It's pathetic.

R: Oh. What a sick line.

S: I haven't brought myself to watch it yet. You know, I know it's out there. At some point, I think we probably should bite the bullet and then do an actual review, but I – the reports that I heard are, as you say, really abusive –

E: Yeah.

S: – very exploitative, not just that it's totally gullible nonsense. It's really exploitative. Yep.

Q3: Love your podcast, listen a lot. Always wondered whose voice says, "And now it's time for Science or Fiction".

J: That's changed over the years. The –

S: The current voice is –

R: It's Izzy.

S: – Izzy. Izzy.

J: Izzy Lawrence, yeah.

R: Izzy Lawrence. She has a podcast called [http://sundayssupplement.blogspot.com/ "Sundays Supplement"]. She's a skeptic and a stand-up comedian in England (''inaudible'').

S: So that's a genuine British accent, unlike some of the previous people who have said this.

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

S: Yes?

Q4: Yeah, with this – the Italian decision about the geologists and the – not predicting the volcano—or the earthquakes—there could – there's, like, a silver lining here. This could be a boon to the insurance industry, because maybe geologists and seismologists need to take out malpractice insurance.

J: Mm-hmm.

R: That's your "silver lining"? The insurance companies? Like, "Well, with all of this, I was really worried about the HMOs, but it looks like I'll be all right."

Q5: All right. Hi, guys! I love the podcast and I love everything you guys do. I'm –

S: Really? Everything we do? You don't know half the stuff that we do.

J: Yeah!

R: You don't want to know.

Q5: Certainly everything I'm aware that you guys do –

S: Oh, OK.

Q5: – and assume you do, which is really (''inaudible'')

S: Good caveat.

J: He hasn't seen [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1X1FOZmmVA "Occ: The Skeptical Caveman"] yet, so –

Q5: Oh, I certainly have!

J: Oh, and you like it?

Q5: Yeah, it's really good stuff!

R: Don't sound so surprised, Jay.

J: Just kidding.

Q5: Anyway. I'm a teaching assistant, and I help teach a lot of science courses—a lot of basic science courses—and we teach the scientific method—and most people understand the scientific method—but there's this other part that never gets explicitly put in there, like, this honesty and integrity built into it, like you need to make sure that the effect that you're trying to explain is really there, and that kind of stuff. Have you guys come up with a really good way to explain that part of science to people?

S: You mean that you just have to be ethical? Or you have to really care about the truth, I guess, is what you're saying?

Q5: Yes.

S: Yeah. I mean, I think—you're right, that is sort of implicit in the scientific process, that, you know, you're trying to find the actual answer, not just work backwards to the answer that you want to have—so, I think that's also implicit in scientific skepticism. I mean, that's part of – you know, one of our core values is, we want to know what's really ''really'' true, not just what ''seems'' to be true, and sometimes you have to dig really, really hard, and you have to be skeptical of your own conclusions. I mean, that ''is'' skepticism, I think, what you're saying. So, I think – combine that with the scientific method and you have scientific skepticism.

J: Yeah, but I think he was asking more about teaching the idea that you – we want to know the truth and be passionate about the truth –

S: Yeah.

J: – and I – it's a hard thing to teach, I think. I think that, you know, we're all kind of freakish in the idea that we're into skepticism. It's – it is something that you could teach your kids, absolutely. But, you know, how do you teach an adult to get into the truth, and get rid of all the garbage that's in their heads? It's hard, as, you know, as people get older, it's hard for them to learn that, I think. But I do agree with you. I think we need to inspire kids to—first off, teach them skepticism. Let's just start with that—I think that the caring will come with that.

== Science or Fiction (55:19) ==

S: "Science or Fiction". I'm going to read you three items—two are real, one is fiction—and then we'll poll the audience. We'll see which one you think is the fiction. So, here we go. Item number one: "A new study finds that astronauts who spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% increased risk of heart attacks and strokes."

J: Whoa.

S: [http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/67117-first-feathered-dinosaurs-found-in-north-america Number two]: "Scientists have discovered the first feathered dinosaur in the western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers." And item number three: "Researchers find that, at the molecular level, evolutionary changes can be highly predictable." All right, so, let's start by polling the audience. Applaud for the one that you think is the ''fiction''. How many people here think that the one about astronauts and heart attacks is the fiction?

(''applause'')

S: OK. How many think the feathered dinosaur is the fiction?

(''very limited applause'')

S: OK.

E: Oh.

S: And how many think that the evolution-is-predictable is the fiction?

(''applause'')

S: OK. I think that was 3–1–2.

R: Hmm.

S: Let's start at this end, Evan. Why don't you tell us what you think?

E: OK –

S: And, I'd like to remind my co-hosts, this is a live show. Keep it quick.

E: "New study finds that astronauts who have spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% chance of – increased risk of heart attack and strokes." OK, so, hmm. What would be the trick here? "More than one month in microgravity. That is a long time, essentially, but 35%—I don't know. That seems like kind of a high number. A lot of things do happen to people in space—microgravity and so forth—and they do carefully study that and the effects on astronauts and so forth, so perhaps that one is true. Second one: "First feathered dinosaurs, western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers." I have no idea about that one. Not a clue. Not a clue. I'll jump to the third one. "Researchers find that, at the ''molecular level'', evolutionary changes can be highly predictable. At the molecular level. That's fascinating. Now, the audience said that that one was going to be most likely the fiction.

S: ''You're'' trying to convince ''them''.

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

E: Well, you know, I think they convinced me, more than I'm going to convince them, of that one, right? I think – at the molecular level. I don't see it. I just can't see it happening at that level. "Evolutionary change is highly predictable." There's a bit of a vagary there in regards to the highly predictable at that level. I'll say that that one is fiction. I agree with the audience.

S: OK. Rebecca?

R: Yeah, I found the audience's argument very convincing as well.

(''laughter'')

R: I have heard about health problems associated with low gravity—zero gravity—"35% increased" – it's the specifics that I'm not sure about. That doesn't seem ridiculous to me, that—35% increase, relatively speaking—i, you know, that doesn't sound too crazy to me. I feel like that could be – easily be science, knowing what I know about other health risks in zero gravity. I do think that there was recently a feathered dinosaur discovered. My problem here is that I believe it—I could be completely wrong about this—but I believe it was discovered in North America, and I do believe it was the first one in North America. Those are my thoughts. But, is that the first one in the western hemisphere? I don't know. So, now I'm trying to think, if there had been one discovered in South America before, because that's still the western hemisphere.

S: Last time I checked, yeah.

R: So, but, would you be that niggling? I'm not sure. And so that leaves us with the idea that evolutionary changes are highly –

S: "Predictable."

R: – predictable—thank you—on the molecular level. Yeah, that does seem way out there to me, 'cause it's written in such a way that makes me think that you have reversed that. But maybe that's what you're trying to make me think. So, for me, it's between the first and the third one, because—and, I should say that I question the first one simply because it doesn't seem out of the ordinary to me, and so you might be trying to, uh, to switch it up—''so I'm staring deep into your eyes, 'cause I don't normally get this chance''.

E: Yeah, it's like a poker read here, yeah.

R: This is like – yeah, this is like a game of poker.

E: Poker.

R: You just look bored.

(''audience'')

R: That's what I'm getting from you right now, is an intense feeling of –

S: What, are you trying to cold read me now?

R: – boredom. I'm seeing an "M".

J: (''in unison'') I'm seeing an "M".

E: I see the number "3".

R: "M – Murder you if you don't get me the answer." That's what I'm getting from you.

E: "M – Murder".

R: So I'm going to go with the audience. I'm going to say that the evolutionary change is –

S: Evolutionary predictable. OK.

R: Yeah.

S: Bob?

B: OK, live show. The astronaut one, number one. 35% seems high to me. I know there's some major issues for extended stays in microgravity. They've gotta exercise, like, hours a day just to maintain what – you know, some muscle tone. But a month doesn't seem long enough, and 35% seems a little bit too much. 'Cause, I know that, when they come back, yeah, things can be tough in 1''g'', but they get it back fairly quickly. So let's look at the other ones here. "First feathered dinosaur"? Yeah. Would it be the first? I know there – they discovered so many in China, but they could be the first one in the western hemisphere. "Another dinosaur group." You would think it would be another dinosaur group if it was the first in the western hemisphere. The third one? Yeah, this one's a little sketchy, but, I don't know, there could be some pattern – there could be some pattern that they detected at the molecular level. "Highly predictable." "Highly" is bothering me. It's – what do you mean by "highly"? Yeah, it's between one and three.

S: And, therefore....

B: And therefore, all right. I'm going to go with the microgravity. 35% just seems like too much.

S: OK.

E: Oooh.

R: It's all right. Hedge your bets.

J: Well, OK. Number two I have no reason to doubt—the one about the feathered dinosaurs. The one about the evolutionary changes can be highly predictable? I'm curious what you mean by "evolutionary changes". I mean, are you saying that they can predict—and I know you're not going to answer this, but I'm questioning—can they predict that a mutation is going to occur, or are they predicting what the evolutionary change is going to be? Am I crazy in asking that question?

S: No. I'm not going to answer it, but you can ask.

(''laughter'')

J: So, I think that they can predict that there's going to be a mutation. I don't think that they can predict what that mutation is going to be. And I think that that's vague, and I'm not going to take that one. I'm going to go with the one about the astronauts as being the fake for a couple of reasons: One, 35% does seem like an awful lot. I do think that that would mean that some heart – some astronauts would have had heart attacks, and I've never heard of an astronaut having a heart attack.

R: Really?

J: Have you?

R: I don't really look into it that much.

J: Well, there you go. That's it. I'm done.

S: All right. So, very quickly, let's see if they changed your mind. Who in the audience—again, applaud again—who thinks the astronauts is the fiction?

(''applause'')

R: Definitely more.

S: Feathered dinosaurs?

(''two or three people applaud'')

S: Thank you. And, evolution being predictable?

(''applause'')

E: Ooh.

J: We've had a major swing, Steve.

R: They split!

E: Might be a little (''inaudible'')

S: I think we swung them to number one!

R: Yeah.

S: But I can't convince anybody that this feathered dinosaur thing is fiction.

J: These two people here!

S: "Scientists have discovered the first feathered dinosaur –

R: You got these guys! What, are they (''inaudible'')

S: They're nobody.

(''laughter'')

S: – in the western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers." And that one is science.

(''groans'')

S: Sorry. I do appreciate it, but that was science.

J: Boring! Who cares?

R: So you guys do suck, though.

(''groans'')

R: No, I'm kidding! I'm kidding.

S: No, they were brave. They were willing to go out there and give it a chance.

J: Right, did you really even have to read that one? Just come on.

S: Imagine if they were right! All right –

E: Yeah, right?

S: – so, the scientist is Darla Zelenitsky. She discovered—and her team—an Ornithomimus dinosaur—which is in the group the ''ornithomimids'', and that is a group of theropods—and it is the first feathered dinosaur in that group, and it was discovered in Alberta, Canada, so it's the first western hemisphere feathered dinosaur. Found three specimens, an adult and two juveniles. The juveniles have just downy feathers all over their body. The adult has the downy feathers but also has, you know, mature feathers and some partially-developed wings. So, it seems like the adults developed these proto-wings, probably not having anything to do with flight –

B: Mating.

S: – something that adults do that children don't do. Maybe something to do with mating, for example. And remarkably well-preserved. So, it increases also the number of different kinds of sediments in which feathered dinosaurs – the evidence of feathers can be found. So it's the first one in the western hemisphere, first of this kind of fossil find, and the first ornithomimid with feathers. Very interesting finding. All right. Let's go on to – I guess we'll go to number one.

== Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:08:11) ==
<blockquote>Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.</blockquote>
J: Paul Kurtz!

{{Outro1}}

== References ==
<references/>

{{Navigation}}

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-17T12:16:05Z

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|episodeDate = 3rd November 2012 
|episodeIcon = File:KurtzPic2.jpg 
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|guest1 = RW: Richard Wiseman
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|qowText = Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality. 
|qowAuthor = [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] 
|}}

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

RW: – a live edition of my favorite podcast and radio show. So, we're going to have Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Jay Novella, Even Bernstein, and – and a woman –

(''laughter'')

RW: – join us. It's the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe!

(''applause'')

S: Hello, and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

(''applause'')

S: Today is Thursday, October 25th, 2012, and we are live from [http://www.csiconference.org/ CSICon 2012].

(''applause'')

Joining me, as always, are Bob Novella –

B: Hey everybody!

(''cheers'')

S: – Rebecca Watson –

R: Hello, everyone!

(''cheers'')

''audience member'': I love you, Rebecca!

R: I love you, too!

S: – Jay Novella...Jay Novella –

J: Wooooo! Rebecca, yeah!

(''cheers'')

R: I love you, Jay!

S: – and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hello, Nashville!

(''cheers'')

S: So, how're you guys doing? How do you like Nashville?

J: It's awesome. I didn't – I thought people were going to literally be playing guitar when I got off the airplane.

B: Oh, come on, Jay.

S: Yeah, in the airport, you know?

J: Yeah.

== This Day in Skepticism (1:28) ==
November 3, 1957 Sputnik 2 launched

S: So, Rebecca, you always start us off with a This Day in Science and Skepticism. This show will be going up on November 3rd, so, did anything happen that day?

R: Nope.

(''laughter'')

B: Ever?

R: Oh, all right. One thing happened. One thing happened! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_2 Sputnik 2] happened.

S: ''Sputnik 2: The Revenge''.

(''laughter'')

R: ''Son of Sputnik''.

S: ''Son of Sputnik''.

J: ''Son of Sputnik''!

R: That's right. Sputnik 2 you might know as "the one that killed the puppy".

(''awwws'')

R: No? Aww, that's weird, 'cause I really thought that this would go over well at a live event! Yeah, Sputnik 2 is the craft that took Laika into orbit, Laika being the Soviet space dog who became the first animal in orbit—for about, like, 10 minutes, before she died.

E: Well, you know –

S: A couple of hours. It was a couple of hours. They thought he was going to survive for about ten days –

R: I think she's a "she".

S: – ''she'' was going to survive –

E: Eh.

R: Get it right, Steve!

S: You know, asexual Russian names, I mean, come on. But, they thought that Laika was going to survive for about ten days, but then they had a little mishap with the cooling system, and –

E: Oops.

S: Yeah. – got a little hot in the capsule—104 degrees, they said in (''inaudible'')

E: That'd be a hot dog. Yep.

(''groans'')

B: Oh, come on. My god.

E: Thank you. I'll be here all the weekend.

R: How – can we just take a moment, just to take a poll of the audience: How are our dead dog jokes doing? Good?

J: Yes!

(''applause'')

R: OK. All right. Yeah.

J: You know what? I didn't know until we researched this item that it was a one-way mission.

R: Yeah.

E: Mm-hmm.

J: That's really nasty.

S: Well, the capsule returned.

(''laughter'')

E: Yeah, well –

S: About 162 days later, it burned up in the atmosphere. But, yeah, they never intended to bring Laika back.

J: No, they actually were going to euthanize her with poison food after the tenth day, I think, right?

R: This is seriously the worst item ever. What was I thinking when I picked it?

S: There – there's Laika.

E: Aww. Aww.

R: Oh yeah! I didn't pick it! Steve forced me to!

E: But, we'd never know who this dog was if it didn't go on Sputnik 2, right? I mean, this would be an otherwise – another animal.

R: No, yeah, and I'm sure Laika appreciates the fame she gets from ''beyond the grave''.

E: She got her fifteen minutes.

== In Memorium ==
=== Paul Kurtz (3:45) ===
* 1925-2012

S: Well, we are going to start the new segment of the show with an ''in memoriam''. We do like to, on the ''Skeptic's Guide'', pause to remember those members of the skeptical community who have passed, and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] died several days ago, just the day before the organizers were coming down to the conference. He died on Sunday. He was 85 years old. It was 1925 to 2012, so that is 86. I can do math. (''audience laughter'') You'll know why i was confused in a moment.

R: 'Cause you're terrible at math?

S: Yes. So, before we get the show started, Ron Lindsay and Kendrick Frazier talked about Paul Kurtz. You know, he was one of the giants of the skeptical movement, of the skeptical community. You know, he was largely responsible for organizing the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, founding Prometheus Books, CFI, [http://www.secularhumanism.org/ Secular Humanism]. He was an academic, a philosopher. He really gave a lot of weight to the movement early on. He made it to that – he broke it to that next level. It wasn't that, you know, before he came on board. So he has to be remembered for that. We did have some interactions with Paul along the years. The first year that we started – (''audience cooing'')

R: Baby Steve!

E: Aww.

S: I was a little younger back then.

R: He's three years old there.

B: He's only half-grey there.

S: (''laughing'') I'm only half-grey!

E: A little less grey, yep.

S: You can mark my age by my greyness up until about ten years ago, when i went totally grey. Right when we got started, in 1996, you know, CSICOP, now CSI, you know, they were the big national skeptical organization. They'd definitely – They took us under their wing, you know, gave us their support, their local membership list, so that we could get our movement going. And i remember meeting Paul at the first World Skeptics Conference, and he was immediately—like, you know, your grandfather—like, you know, very, very comfortably took on that air of being a mentor. It's like, "Yeah, this is great. You're welcome to the skeptical movement." So i definitely remember him fondly in that way. A few years later, Paul organized a meeting of the local skeptical groups. In the picture here you can see me again with Bob, Perry, and Evan. The four of us came up together –

J: Now, if i remember correctly, Rebecca, you and i were off being badass somewhere else, right?

R: I think that's what was happening, yeah.

S: – and, i think, in the foreground, that's Colonel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Nickell Joe Nickell], isn't it?

E: Colonel.

S: Yeah, he had broke his leg in Spain, or something?

R: Round of applause for Colonel Joe Nickell!

E: I remember that.

(''applause'')

S: Joe actually is going to come up, and he's going to read a poem that he wrote, i believe, about Paul.

JN: Paul was a great supporter of the arts, and i hope he would have liked this. The poem is called "Book of Seasons: An elegy". (''Uncertain re: permission to reproduce poem'')

S: Thank you, Joe.

=== Leon Jaroff (7:34) ===
* 1926-2012

S: This same weekend, Saturday before the show, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_(magazine) Leon Jaroff] also died. ''He'' was 85, hence my confusion. So, Leon Jariff—not a big name in the skeptical community recently, and if you ask, you know, people at conventions like this if they knew who he was – I mean, in fact, right before the show Rebecca said to me, "Who's Leon Jaroff?"

R: (''indignant gasp'')

S: Sorry, Rebecca.

(''audience laughter'')

S: But he was perhaps one of the most skeptical journalists that we have had.

B: Yeah.

S: He was the science columnist for ''Time Magazine''. It was he who said, "You know, popularizing science is important, you know, we should start a science-dedicated magazine." And that was ''Discover Magazine''. That was him. He was not afraid to be a hard-nosed skeptic when writing about scientific issues. So, for example, when writing about chiropractors, [http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,213482,00.html he wrote],

<blockquote>
Chiropractors also employ a bewildering variety of weird practices to diagnose their patients. Some use applied kinesiology, a muscle test that supposedly can diagnose allergies and diseased organs. Hair analysis and iris readings are commonplace in the profession. Even sillier are many of the treatments that chiropractors use and recommend: homeopathic potions, colon irrigation, magnetic therapy, enzyme pills, colored-light therapy, and something called "balancing body energy," among other mystical procedures with undocumented effects.
</blockquote>

S: That's from a mainstream journalist writing in ''Time Magazine''. Do we see this kind of thing today? I don't think so.

B: Nope.

(''audience applause'')

S: So, you know, we do have to, I think, also note the support that Jaroff gave to such a good science journalism, and that kind of hard-nosed, skeptical science journalism is definitely something we miss. That's a void that, I think, that we in the skeptical community have to fill, but, unfortunately, it is a void.

== News Items ==
=== Big Bang Conference at CERN (9:31)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19870036 Big Bang and religion mixed in Cern debate]

S: Rebecca –

R: Yes!

S: – this is a different quote. It's not as good a quote.

<blockquote>
Science in isolation is great for producing stuff, but not so good for producing ideas.
</blockquote>

R: Mm-hmm.

S: Who said that?

R: That was said by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Pinsent Andrew Pinsent] at the Ramsey Center for Science and Religion. What I particularly liked about this quote is that it is completely reversed – it is the exact opposite of what I would have suggested.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I would say that science is actually really good at ideas, but, in order to produce stuff, you have to add something else. You know, like, they might be able to figure out lasers, but to make a CD player you need a marketing executive.

S: Or death ray.

R: Thank you. Yeah, of course. Why didn't I go there first?

(''laughter'')

R: Yeah, so, this quote comes from a recent article that the BBC produced: "Big Bang and religion mixed in CERN debates". Apparently, there was a conference recently that CERN held—you remember CERN, you know, the guys who, apparently, may have found –

J: Higgs!

R: – the Higgs boson.

S: A boson with Higgs-like properties.

R: A Higgs-like thing.

S: Boson, yeah.

R: A Higgish. I like "Higgish" –

B: "Higgish"?

R: – a little bit.

J: (''laughing'') "A little bit!"

S: "Higgy"?

B: (''singing, inaudible'') ''Higgy again."

R: So, yes. Apparently, I don't know the purpose – I don't know what, who dreamt this up, but what I'm thinking is that someone was concerned that they may have found a particle that many people know as the "God particle", and, so, they're concerned that they're going to be excommunicated or, you know, that people will rebel—religious people will rebel—against science. Basically, we'll have some sort of Dark Ages–esque thing happening, and, so, maybe somebody at CERN thought, "Well, we should have this conference where we talk about how religious people should be OK with the Higgs boson."

B: Mm-hmm.

R: So, those are the good intentions that I'm assuming are behind this conference that has speakers such as this. The quotes in here are pretty fun, and none of them have any amount of intelligence to them. Steve, you're the one who brought this one to my attention here –

S: Yes.

R: I'm interested in what – we've talked a little bit before about things like the Templeton Foundation, which is an organization that gives out a prize – gives out prizes to people who can explore science in a religious context, basically. And I'm a bit opposed to it. I feel like it's muddying the waters. I think we don't ''need'' to bring religion into what people are doing at CERN.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I think those two things are happily separated, but I'm interested in knowing your feelings on this.

S: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think trying to introduce theology into science is misguided. You know, this conference was specifically about the origin of the universe. So, it's not just about scientific issues in particular. I think the thinking, at least on the part of the theologians who were quoted about this conference, is that, well, you're talking about the origin of the universe. That's a really big question, and religion is about answering the really big questions—not science. Science is narrow and reductionist, and makes stuff, but can't really grapple with the big questions of our origins. And that's exactly incorrect, as you were saying. That's a complete knock to science. I mean, science is, in fact, the only human intellectual endeavor that ''can'' answer any empirical question about the origin of the universe.

R: Yeah.

J: So, was the conference, though, the scientists trying to appease religious people? The saying that –

R: Well, you know, apparently, this was – the conference was done on the part of CERN, according to BBC, and that's what I find troubling. I'm totally OK with a conference that religious people host, you know, and the topic might be "How do we –" you know, "How do we consider our theology now that we know ''X'', ''Y'', and ''Z''—now that science has discovered this? What does that mean for ''our'' belief system?" And I think that's fine, but, you know, apparently, the theologians who were there seem to think that this was a chance to ''debate'' the scientists –

J: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

R: – and, no! Why would you do that? Debate is completely the opposite direction of where you want to go.

S: It also – I mean, the quotes seem to me like a desperate grasp at relevance, trying to make it seem like they're – you know, that theology is still relevant to questions about origins of the universe, when, in fact, science has completely displaced it from that endeavor.

J: So, did it end up with, like, a fistfight? Like, what happened?

(''laughter'')

E: Science won.

R: I haven't found any evidence of any arrests, so, apparently –

S: There were no fisticuffs?

J: That really must've been awkward as hell, though, right? Like, they're like, sitting there, like, after a whole day, and they're like, "Uh, OK, it's over now."

E: Something tells me they're not going to be doing this again. They're going to learn from this.

S: I don't know.

R: Well, I mean, it's actually not even – like, I wish it had been that exciting. But, instead, it just seems like it was really ''boring'' –

E: Yeah.

R: – and nobody came to ''any'' conclusions. Because you ''can't'', you know?

S: Yeah.

R: You're just having a discussion of, like, well, you know, "But what don't we know?"

=== Italian Earthquake Scientists Convicted (14:57)===
* [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/22/us-italy-earthquake-court-idUSBRE89L13V20121022 Italian scientists convicted over earthquake warning]

S: Now, we're trying to keep – we like to keep our live shows really light –

(''laughter'')

E: So far, so good.

S: So, we thought we'd talk about a horrible earthquake that killed over three hundred people.

E: Yeah, let's go there.

R: Good intro. Good intro there.

S: But there's actually a better story embedded in that. There were six Italian scientists, who were recently convicted of manslaughter –

B: Yeah.

S: – for failure to properly communicate the warnings about the upcoming L'Aquila earthquake in 2009. Yeah, we've been following this story, you know, since it happened. The quick version is that there were a number of small tremors in this very earthquake-prone part of Italy, and the geologists—the local geologists—you know, were following it. And their opinion was that, well, these tremors are very common. Most such tremors are not followed by major quakes. Most major quakes are not preceded by these kinds of tremors. So, the probability of a major quake occurring is not particularly higher, you know, now, just because of these tremors, than at any time, and, therefore, there's no cause for alarm. Now, they were specifically asked during a press conference, "Should we panic?" You know, "Should we evacuate?" And they said "No. There's no reason to evacuate. Stay at home and drink a glass of wine."

B: Steve, was this about a year ago that we covered this?

S: 2009. 2009 –

B: Oh, wow. (''inaudible'')

S: – so, was the quake, and then the court trial started about a year ago, and now the decision came down that the six scientists were convicted to six years – I think six years in prison and something like, you know, millions of dollars in damages for manslaughter—for the deaths of the people who didn't evacuate because they – of their reassurances that there was nothing to be worried about.

R: That's horrific.

J: Well, i, you know, to play devil's advocate real quick, if there was true negligence—like, if they didn't follow through with things that they needed to do, if they did a terrible job at analyzing the data, in a fashion that – where the data could have been analyzed better, or they actually weren't asking their peers for the information—i can understand if there was extreme negligence.

S: Right.

J: But, even still, like, that's very hard to prove, and I just don't understand –

S: Well, I mean, not really. The question is, was their opinion within the standard for their profession? That's—in my opinion—that's the only real question here. You can't be blamed for being wrong, right? You can't be blamed for a bad outcome if you were following the standard. Now, of course, scientists can't predict earthquakes. You can't predict when an earthquake is going to occur. That's the bottom line. What – every statement they said was truthful, you know, every factual statement. "These tremors do not necessarily mean that there's an earthquake coming, and they are not a reason to evacuate. We don't evacuate every city where there's tremors because there might be a major quake, because it's not that predictive." So, that was not negligent. No, and they weren't really being accused of negligence. They were basically being accused of poorly communicating to the public. It seems to be based on a lot of false premises about what scientists ''can know''—what an expert about, you know, an earthquake, a geologist, expert ''can know''.

R: Yeah, they've been convicted for not using a magical power they don't have.

S: Yeah.

R: They might as well have convicted all the psychics in Italy for not accurately predicting this earthquake.

J: I think we need to be careful—i don't disagree, of course. I don't think that these men should be going to jail for this at all—but it is an important thing to state that, I think, people should go to prison, or get in trouble ''legally'', if they are misrepresenting science or – right? So you see where I'm going with this.

S: Well, yeah. If you are –

J: If you're setting that premise—you're saying, "Hey, these guys screwed up, they didn't do what they were supposed to do, they didn't communicate to us the real possible outcomes here", whatever—and, like –

S: Yeah.

J: – I'll reiterate, I don't think that they should be going to jail—

B: Well, I don't agree –

J: —but, I do think, though, that that standard that that court set needs to be applied all the way down the ladder.

B: Yeah, but, Jay, like, someone saying that "I have a cure for cancer and it's scientifically proven" but it's a sham?

J: Exactly, right? So, if they're going to actually take those scientists out and say "You're done. You're not performing science anymore and you're going to jail for that bad decision or information you gave", well, hello! Then, you know, all of a sudden, a million lawsuits need to be filed.

S: But, it wasn't – to clarify, though, it wasn't ''bad'', it was just ''unlucky''. I mean, doctors encounter this all the time, you know. You are asked to decide, you know, what tests to order, what diagnoses a patient might have. There's a whole lot of liability involved with that. You can't be convicted of malpractice just because of a bad outcome if what you did was within the standard of care.

B: Right.

S: So, was the information they were giving to the public within the standard for the profession? If the answer is "yes", the fact that there was a low-probability earthquake the next week is not their fault.

E: Right.

S: It doesn't change the fact – you know, if they're saying there's a 99% chance that there's not going to be an earthquake, and then the 1% thing happens, they were still right –

J: Yeah.

S: – in saying that it was unlikely.

R: Yeah.

E: Didn't the evidence show, basically, that they performed correctly, essentially? They did not –

S: That's the consensus. I mean, so, there's worldwide outrage, especially among the scientific community (''inaudible'') –

B: This has got to be shot down in a higher court.

S: Yeah.

B: This can't – can't possibly stand.

E: I hope so.

S: Well, there's two appeals left. There's two appeals, and they will stay out of prison before those appeals. So, the United States National Academy of Science, the Royal Academy of Science—the Royal Society, rather—issued a joint statement saying that "that is why we must protest the verdict in Italy. If it becomes a precedent in law, it could lead to a situation in which scientists will be afraid to give expert opinion."

J: Yeah, that's devastating.

E: Mm-hmm.

S: So, it would have a chilling effect. What – you know, what geologist is going to, you know, talk to the public in Italy now, if you could wind up in jail and, you know, financially devastated, and your career devastated, because you can't predict the future, you know, because you don't have a crystal ball? It's insane. It's insane.

J: Yeah. To think that they're going after these scientists, and they're not going after the rampant quackery throughout –

S: Well, there's that, too.

E: I wonder how much pressure they came under from, like, the families, the survivors, of this terrible, terrible devastation –

J: Oh yeah, they had to hang someone.

E: – and I imagine they put a lot of pressure on politicians and other people in order to hold ''somebody'' accountable.

J: They have to. They had to send someone down the river for that.

B: Did they have a trial?

S: Yeah.

B: Did they have witnesses and experts coming in?

S: Yeah. Yep.

B: I'd love to know the details of what exactly happened, because how could –

(''laughter'')

S: So, we'll see if the worldwide backlash has an effect. I mean, again, they do have two appeals left, so we'll definitely follow it.

=== Whale Makes Human Sounds (21:35)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20026938 Beluga whale 'makes human-like sounds']

S: All right, Rebecca, so, we have a cute animal –

R: Thank you.

S: – we're going to talk about now.

J: This is a happy one!

R: Just tell me this narwhal or whatever is alive.

S: It's a whale.

E: It's alive and well.

S: It's a beluga whale.

B: It sort of looks like a narwhal.

R: Tell me this beluga is alive!

E: That's NOC the beluga. They're very much alive.

R: It's not a beluga?

E: "NOC". N-O-C.

S: "NOC". NOC the beluga.

R: Oh! "That's NOC."

(''laughter'')

R: I was about to say, "No, ''that is a beluga''."

S: Sounds like a children's song.

E: It does sound like a children's –

S: Evan, sing it.

E: No.

S: OK.

J: Don't change it! Please don't –

E: If my daughter was here, maybe. But, no. So, what's important about NOC the beluga? Well, OK, so, picture this: You are part of the National Marine Mammal Foundation, OK, and you're in the tank, swimming around with the whales and stuff, and, all of a sudden, you hear somebody—you hear a voice—call your name. Something to the effect that – "Get out of the water! Get out of the water!" So, you're in the tank and you come up and you say, "OK, who told me to get out of the water? Who told me to get out of the water?" And the other scientists and people are looking around you like, "Nobody? What the heck are you talking about?" And, he's like, "Well, I definitely ''heard'' that!" Well, what did he actually hear? Well, apparently, NOC the beluga made some noises very reminiscent of human noises. Beluga whales are, you know, incredible creatures. Their calls – They're known as the canaries of the sea. They have a very high-frequency, high-pitched tone to their noises that they make, but they make lots of different kinds of noises. They can emit up to eleven different kinds of sounds—crackles, whistles, trills, squawks—all sorts of things. But, it's been rumored that these whales can emit noises that sound like humans talking. And, for the first time, they've actually recorded NOC the whale making these noises, and they have it on tape. And we have it on tape.

R: Nah.

(''NOC makes unnervingly human-sounding noises'')

R: Did he maybe just swallow a kazoo?

(''laughter'')

J: Everybody has a drunk neighbor that makes those noises.

(''laughter'')

E: Oh, gosh. Who knows what the heck he was saying? You know, dolphins have been taught to mimic noises that kind of sound like human voices, but, before this, there's been no record of an animal ''spontaneously'' coming up and making these kinds of noises. This is the first evidence, the first hard evidence we have of it.

R: Here's – I have a theory. I have a theory. I have a theory that – so, whales, in general, are incredibly intelligent –

E: Oh yeah.

R: – possibly as smart as us, but they don't want thumbs, or any way to talk to us –

E: Or fire.

R: – and I feel like they do, basically – That's true. No, I saw Spongebob once. There was fire under the sea. I think it can be done.

S: Yep, but they don't have nanotechnology, though.

R: They don't. So, my theory is that whales are basically, like – they have – it's like they have locked-in syndrome, you know? Where they're just –

J: Oh, no.

R: – super-intelligent, and there's all these people around them, and they're just messing with them –

J: So, he was screaming, actually –

R: Yeah! And, so, he's been like, his whole life, he's been in this stupid little – like, he's in captivity, right? So, he's been in this stupid little aquarium, and he's just, like, "I hate all of you! And I'm going to will myself to tell you, because you're too stupid to understand!"

E: So, basically, what's going on here is, the whale has learned to change – rapidly change pressure within its naval cavity in order to create these sounds. And, it hasn't – the whale is able to over-inflate what's known as its vestibular sac in its blowhole, which is normally acts to stop water from basically coming in. So, the whale is going through a lot of, you know, effort, essentially, to try to make these noises. And I'm sure they're going to be trying to figure out exactly, you know, basically, ''why'' is the whale doing this?

S: Well, he just – this whale was – did spend his life in captivity –

E: Yeah.

S: – so, he did hear human speech a lot, and maybe he's just, to some extent, mimicking the sounds that he grew up hearing his whole life.

J: It's definitely – it definitely has a human sound to it, in the cadence and everything.

S: Yeah.

J: I mean, he's intelligent enough to mimic a human, which is really cool.

R: Yeah.

J: And, then, you always think, you know, if he can mimic a human—if his brain is advanced that much—you know, maybe he –

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But, is he mimicking humans or making fun of humans? You know, like people make fun of other languages?

R: Yeah, he's just like "Weh! Weh! Weh! This is what you sound like!"

E: Yeah. You stupid bald monkey and (''inaudible'')! Get out of here!

B: Sounds like a false dichotomy.

=== PANDAS Controversy (26:18)===
* [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/a-pandas-story/ A PANDAS Story]

S: So, we're going to talk about – going from talking about beluga whales to talking about PANDAS! Except, we're not talking about pandas, because we're talking about –

E: Wait.

R: Stop toying with my emotions, Steve!

S: I had to put a cute picture of a panda up there for you, Rebecca. We are talking about pediatric autoimmune –

R: It makes sense.

S: – neuropsychiatric disorder associated with –

E: I didn't know PANDA was an acronym. Cool!

R: Steve, I miss the panda.

S: – streptococcal infection—or, PANDAS. See? There's a panda.

(''laughter, cooing'')

E: Aww!

R: Yay.

S: We're talking about PANDAS –

E: Aww.

R: Boo.

J: Oh.

E: That's worse.

S: – which is a legitimately controversial medical diagnosis! So, essentially, what happens is, children suddenly develop ticks—like Tourette syndrome—and psychiatric disorders—obsessive–compulsive disorder—and it is thought that, in some cases, that it is actually – the inciting event is an infection—bacteria—streptococcal infection. Now, of course, it's always difficult to establish the reality of a new disease. Unless you get all your ducks in a row, and all the, you know, pathology all adds up, it's sometimes difficult to identify a legitimate new syndrome and to prove that – cause and effect. So, correlation is one thing. As we know, correlation is not ''necessarily'' causation. And, so, the syndrome exists. There are – the number of physicians who have identified the sudden onset psychiatric – neuropsychiatric disorder, and in some cases it is temporally associated with a streptococcal infection. But that's not the same thing as saying that the strep infection ''caused'' the neuropsychiatric syndrome. So, that's – and there's the controversy. Now, of course, we live in the modern Internet age. So, as soon as a scientist says, "I think that there's this syndrome—I want to call it PANDAS—and – sort of, you know, a psychiatric syndrome provoked by a bacterial infection", of course, there are now support groups, and there's groups on the Internet, and there's patient groups supporting this diagnosis before the science is even settled. And, then, of course, once that happens, when you try to do more science, or have any kind of discussion about whether or not this is a real syndrome, you have parents and patient groups and advocacy groups, you know, calling you all kinds of nasty names and saying there's a conspiracy against people with PANDAS, it's all the insurance companies and Big Pharma and evil doctors or whatever. So, that's the situation that we're in the middle of right now, unfortunately, is that, before the science is settled, you know, there's the scientific controversy, then there's the public controversy. This came to the media attention recently because of a 16-year-old girl called Elizabeth Wray. She developed, you know, a syndrome like PANDAS with ticks and psychological disorders, was diagnosed by a physician with PANDAS, and then was transferred to Boston's Children's Hospital for – presumably for further treatment of PANDAS. Now, the story that is going around the PANDAS community is that once she got to Boston University—or Boston Children's Hospital—she was told – the parents were told, "We don't believe that PANDAS is real – that it exists", and then they essentially admitted their daughter to the psychiatric unit and started treating her with psychiatric medications. Now, I don't know if that's true, because the doctors and the hospital are not telling their side of the story because of patient confidentiality. So, we don't know what their side of the story is. We only know the parents' side of the story, filtered through the PANDAS community. Unfortunately, now there's – this story has taken on a life of its own. There's a Free Elizabeth Wray movement going on within the PANDAS community, they're telling all kinds of horror stories about Boston Children's Hospital, and, you know, we can't verify any of it. What's interesting in reading about it is that each side has their narrative—and I wrote about this on Science-Based Medicine—because one of the things that – the ideas that we're wrestling with in the skeptical community is that—well, all right, we have, I think, a good approach to critical thinking, we understand a lot about self-deception, about the nature of science and pseudoscience—but we don't always have a good story to tell the public, or we have a hard time convincing mainstream outlets that we have – that our story is an interesting and good one. You know, we have to really market our narrative—the skeptical narrative. When you read about stories like this, the PANDAS proponents have a really compelling emotional narrative. It may be total B.S.—i don't know—but it's very compelling. They have a story of a child suffering from an unusual disease, parents who just want to do what's right for her—I believe all those things are correct—and then they are, essentially, being abused by a dismissive and skeptical medical establishment who doesn't believe in this disease, and that is treating their child with perhaps harmful, you know, psychiatric medications. They even – this went to court. Apparently, the hospital thought that the parents were being negligent in not allowing them to give proper standard of care—psychiatric treatment—to their child, and they wanted to have custody taken away from the parents, and they wanted to admit Elizabeth to a locked psychiatric ward—again, not sure – I can't verify those from the hospital's side of things. A judge – a Massachusetts judge essentially made her a ward of the state while they sorted out what was going on, but they did not grant the hospital their request to treat her in the way that they wanted to. So, they essentially just – the state took her out of everybody's hands for a moment – for the moment. So, it's interesting. Of course, the PANDAS community, again, is up in arms, you know. The court essentially took custody away from these parents that are only trying to do what's right for their daughter. But, of course, you could see the other narrative—you know, let's assume that the physicians think that—even if you think – whether or not you think PANDAS really exists—they think that she has a psychiatric illness, the parents are in denial, they're pursuing this false diagnosis, and they're, you know, refusing standard medical care. That's a story, too.

B: What if you just pulled out the whole strep association, and just treat it like a "pandisorder"? Is their beef that it's associated with strep, and they don't think there's any association? Why don't they just treat it like a neuropsychiatric disorder –

S: Yeah.

B: – and forget about the whole strep association?

S: Well, because the strep association would lead you to treat with things like antibiotics. So, that's the question: Should you treat it with antibiotics, or should you treat her like a psychiatric (''inaudible'') patient?

J: Why not both? I mean, why wouldn't you –

S: Well, she has had at least one round of antibiotics. You can also treat it like an autoimmune disease, with, like, intravenous globulin, for example. So, I mean, these are real medical questions. Do we treat it like an infection, do we treat it like a post-infectious auto-immune disease, or do we treat it like a psychiatric disorder? Those are real questions.

J: Steve, are you saying pandas don't exist? Let me just get this straight.

(''laughter'')

S: So, well, I did – to give a serious answer to your sarcastic question, I did –

R: My favorite kind.

S: – take the opportunity – I'm good that way. I'm good that way. I did take the opportunity just to familiarize myself with the PANDAS literature—again, I always emphasize, I'm no an expert in this, but I can read the literature and give my opinion like a science journalist—i think it's genuinely controversial. When I read the research, there's lots of – the ducks are not in a row. So, when you do things like treat kids who apparently have PANDAS with antibiotics in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, they don't necessarily improve. And, if you look for the antibodies that are supposed to be there, they don't necessarily correlate with the disease onset or with the existence of strep. So –

B: So, this is clearly not like autism and vaccines. It's just more complicated than that.

S: So, no. So, right. So, autism and vaccines, like, I would say, that's been studied enough to say that autism's – that autism is not caused by vaccines. We can say that. We can make the negative statement. I cannot make the negative statement that PANDAS does not exist, only that the research so far has not reached the threshold where we can agree that it does exist and that there is some actual negative data—there's some positive data, too—so it's legitimately controversial. It did remind me, though, of the chronic Lyme disease controversy—

R: Yeah.

S: —which is very common in New England—again, where they think that a number of symptoms, including neurological symptoms, can be caused by a bacterial infection and treated with antibiotics. And the same – there's a lot of overlap in those two communities, you know.

J: Steve, are you saying that the public has unrealistic expectations?

S: Well, I think – it's partly that. I mean, I think the public is uncomfortable with the uncertainty, and they like this sort of hero–villain narrative, so they paint the medical community as the villains, and—except for those maverick physicians who understand. They're Lyme-literate, or they understand PANDAS, so they're the heroes—and, then, the insurance companies don't want to pay for, you know, over-and-over recurrent courses of IV antibiotics, so they're the villains, you know. They're not—I'm not defending insurance companies, but sometimes they actually – sometimes they're right. They don't want to pay for things that are not science-based or evidence-based. So, it's complicated. And, you know, how do we – so, how do we deal with a child with this disorder when we don't know what the best scientific answer is—we don't know if it's autoimmune, infectious, or psychiatric? We just have to, you know, do the best we can—and there may be different physicians who would take different approaches—but to portray it as "PANDAS definitely exists. If you don't believe in it, you're dismissive and you're mean and evil, or you're protecting some kind of Big Pharma grant that you're getting"—they always bring that up—rather than saying, "You know, we really want to know the right answer, but we just haven't found it yet. It's still – it's legitimately controversial."

J: Yeah, I think what you're saying does confirm what I was thinking, is that the public wants an answer, science is not yet done figuring this one out, and –

S: Yeah. Like the earthquake one, right?

J: Yeah.

S: Sometimes the answer is, "We don't know yet", you know. "We need to do more research". In medicine, we have to make decisions with imperfect, you know, information, so, you know.

J: Wouldn't it be typical, too – like, let's say that this is happening over and over again –

S: Yeah.

J: – like, at some point, some doctors are going to come up with different ideas, they're going to try it out, you know. The trial-and-error process happens, and—i hate to say it, but—this girl is probably going to be one of the people that gets tested on with new ideas.

S: Well, I mean – well, if you're really testing then you should be doing a research protocol. If you're just applying the best knowledge that we have to an individual patient, that's – a certain amount of trial and error with that that's not really experimentation. So, there is a difference there. So, I don't know. The other interesting question that I'm kind of alluding to is, what role do the patient or the advocacy groups play? I think, a lot of times, that they are helpful in raising awareness for a disease or a disorder and raising funding, and advocating for patients. You know, I've seen, I think, there's a lot of very effective, very good patient advocacy groups out there. But, sometimes, they put their nickel down on a specific scientific answer, and that's not their job.

J: Yeah.

S: It's not their job to predict or demand that science give them the answer they want. And, you know, unfortunately, some people want the answer to be "an infection"—not "genes", not, you know, "We don't know".

J: Yeah. It's curable. That's the one they want.

S: Of course, who – that's the answer I would want to have! "It's something outside that is, you know, foreign, that can be cured, and that can reverse my child to the way that they were". Who – every parent wants that to be the answer, but sometimes you – you know, you have to step back from what you want and listen to the evidence. That's the – that's the scientist's, that's the physician's job, you know. You should just let them do their job, you know.

J: All right, so, I want to bring up a quick side point on this.

S: Yeah.

J: So, as an example, let's say, fifty years ago, let's say this was happening. What stance do you think the public would have differently than what we're seeing today?

S: It's the same, and this ''did'' happen fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, you know, she would be diagnosed with neurosyphilis—maybe not somebody who was sixteen, but that was the stand-in for what we now would, you know, the same subculture would diagnose with chronic Lyme. There were believers in that. There were physicians who believed in treatments like chelation therapy, you know, and science proved it wrong, and they said, "Well, we don't care, we're going to still do it. We're going to come up with – We're just going to keep coming up with special pleading and alternate theories, and form our own societies and our own – and just keep doing it, and say that it's all a conspiracy."

J: Mm-hmm.

S: So, but, I think that it's just the turnaround time is so much faster because of the Internet. Like, another example: CCSVI, right? The alleged blockage in the veins that drained blood from the brain, causing multiple sclerosis. It's that – that whole process—of Dr. Zamboni proposing this entity and a treatment, to it being researched, to it being refuted, to, you know, patient advocacy groups springing up and calling for conspiracies and calling for research and demanding that science give them the answer that they want—all has taken place within a few years. We've seen that cycle happen right before our eyes. So, the Internet is just making it happen a lot quicker and a lot bigger, I think. But it's always been this way.

J: So do you have any ideas on what we could do? Could the skeptical community do anything to help this (''inaudible'')?

S: Well, I think what we do is, we discuss the issue from a science, logical, critical thinking point of view, you know. We point out the role of science in this, and we, I think, we try to bring the public discourse to a level that can deal with it in a more productive way, rather than the conspiracy mongering, sort of lowest-common-denominator that it would otherwise sink to.

J: Yeah.

=== Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44)===
* pnd

S: Well, let's move on. Jay, we're talking about how the media presents stories about paranormal activities.

J: Yeah, this is interesting. So, a professor decided to—Professor Brewer decided that—because what we're seeing over the years is a very obvious interest, in the general public, to news articles, and to TV shows, that talk about ghosts—and, you know, we've all seen the ''Ghost Hunter'' TV show—and, to people like us, at best, we watch it, and it's fun, right? 'Cause it's ridiculous and entertaining, and we like to see people from our perspective—a skeptical perspective—they're acting foolishly. But, there are a lot of people that are watching this, and they're riveted. Like, they really love it and they think a lot of it's real—and, I'm sure, to a certain degree, I can't say everyone that watches it and thinks everything about it is real—but, in the end, there's a huge entertainment factor there, and, unfortunately, to us skeptics, we feel like there's a lot of people that simply believe it, and that's their favorite entertainment. And I know a lot of people—I'm friends with a lot of people—that literally have active discussions on Facebook all the time, that I dip into, that are talking about the latest TAPS show. It would be be, "Can you believe it?" and "I knew that place was haunted!", and they're like, you know, getting whooped up.

S: I don't get it. I just don't get it. Nothing happens!

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

R: That's not true! That's not true.

E: Like "Seinfeld", yeah.

S: But, I mean, but they never find a ghost.

R: Steve, Steve. Did you feel that?

(''laughter'')

R: That happens! That happens all the time.

(''applause'')

R: They feel so much.

J: The thing is, you know –

S: I want to see a [http://www.hark.com/clips/pnzwffccqk-10-people-witnessed-a-free-floating-full-torso-vaporous-apparition full, floating torso] drift across the camera lens. Then I'll be impressed.

B: I still won't believe it. (''inaudible'')

S: No, but at least it'll be entertaining.

J: A lot of the shows, though, they're all right on the cusp, you know, of the noise, right? They're always right on that cusp. They're always ''just'' seeing something, or something falls over, you know? Or there's a noise from upstairs, or whatever, and it's never – they never give you that, you know? You don't get that –

R: This, actually – this came up—tomorrow I'll be talking about the [http://paranormalroadtrip.org/ paranormal road trip] that I just went on with [http://www.jonronson.com/ Jon Ronson] and [http://richardwiseman.wordpress.com/ Richard Wiseman] that got us here—and, at one of the stops, we were at a – we did talk to someone in a "haunted museum", and she was telling us that "the ghost hunters were there, and it was very exciting because there was a noise in the attic, and there were steps (''step sounds'') even though nobody was up there, and so the ghost hunter ran over and climbed up the ladder and looked into the attic, and, just then, a lady, dressed all in white, came ''flying at him'', and he shrieked in horror and fell down the ladder, and it was all really dramatic", and we were just completely blown away, obviously. We were riveted –

E: Yeah, well.

R: – and we said, "We cannot ''wait'' to see that footage!"

(''groans'')

R: – and she said, "Actually, I mean, it was so good, they didn't actually get that on camera.

B: Darn it!

R: No, all the cameras were down in another room somewhere."

J: Yeah, of course.

E: Well.

S: That was like –

R: "There's literally no evidence of it", though. Yeah.

S: – Ed Warren. We were investigating Ed Warren. He told us this story of being in a haunted house, and they had a local news crew over there, and, like, for two hours, they videotaped things flying around the room, you know, like, I say, really impressive, you know, smoking-gun evidence of paranormal activity. We're like, "Great! Can we see that footage?"

E: Sure!

J: "Yeah!"

S: "You know what? They taped over it for the news segment later that night."

(''laughter'')

S: Go figure. Stupid news crew.

J: So, I – I'm going to ask a couple of questions that I want you guys to not answer right now, but just think about it, 'cause these are pretty obvious questions, but I think they're interesting. "Why do people believe, or like to believe, in the paranormal? What's the attraction?" It's an interesting question if you think about it. There are people that ''really'' seek it out and love it. And there's something exciting about it. There's something kind of visceral about it. To my mind—to a skeptical mind—I don't have a connection to it. I just don't see what that allure is, other than, maybe—because I do like horror movies, and I do like to get scared. I love being actually scared sitting in a movie theater. It doesn't happen that often, but when it does happen it's very thrilling—and, maybe they're just having a lot of those thrilling moments. It's easier for them to get scared.

R: But, also, I mean, don't you think, maybe, it's got something to do with the fact that, maybe, we're not going to rot in the ground and die and never see our loved ones again...? Maybe?

J: Maybe? It's – you know, I'm not going to say no, but when I think about it, there's something thrilling about it. I'm not thinking, as I'm being thrilled in a horror movie, "Oh, I'm defying death by being thrilled right now!" That's not happening. I'm just – there is something – it's like, you know, eating something really spicy that hurts.

S: Yeah, but to –

J: It hurts, but it's good at the same time, right?

E: Uh.

S: To a lot of people, definitely, you know, evidence of ghosts is evidence of the afterlife. That's the appeal.

R: Yeah, and when we talk to people who describe their own experiences often—they're talking about Grandma and Grandpa and whatnot coming back to them and telling them that it's all OK—you know, and they're very comforting messages –

E: Yeah, which is why –

S: They want a narrative.

E: Which is why they watch these shows. It reinforces these positions that these people have, you know, and they derive a certain, you know, need out of it.

J: I wonder, though, because those shows are ''so bad''! They're so bad. Can they really be, you know?

R: I mean, there's a lot of – No, no, no! Personally, I would derive a lot of happiness from knowing that my dearly beloved grandmother, who I adored when I was young—she died when I was young—I would get so much happiness knowing that she was just screwing around with asshole ghosthunters on TV. Just, like, brushing past them and then disappearing whenever the cameras come out you know? That would give me a lot of satisfaction, knowing that.

J: Well, maybe the skeptical version of it is watching a YouTube video of Hitchens just tearing some moron apart, right? That's our version of that?

E: That releases endorphins, yeah.

J: 'Cause that makes me believe in something, right?

E: Yeah.

J: It gives me a thrill, but – OK, anyways. So, there is an article we're talking about here. So, Dr. Paul Brewer, who is – teaches at the University of Deleware, developed a study that was recently published in the journal ''Science: Communication'' that examines the influence of the media on the public's perception of the paranormal. So, here is his test: He took four news articles that were similar to each other, but they had significant differences in some of the details. The essence of it was, he had an article on one end of the spectrum that described a paranormal effect with a paranormal investigator, and they were using instruments to measure things, or whatever. And, then, as you go down to the fourth article, the fourth article gets very descriptive about using, you know, faux scientific language to make the paranormal investigators sound scientifically-minded, and using scientific tools. And, what he found was, the more of the faux science that was in the article, the more that the people believed that the paranormal accounts were true. You know, it's kind of a kick in the gut for us skeptics, because—and for us scientists, because—they're using our lingo, and our vernacular, and the way that we go about presenting data, and they're fooling people with it—because, I think, the general public is trained to a certain degree to recognize scientific language and recognize the formality of science—and they're using that—and I don't know how deliberate it is. Maybe they figured it out for the TV shows, that, you know, "hey, the more we B.S. this, the more we make this meter look cool and we throw in, you know, technical jargon, the more people that are going to be interested in our TV show"—

B: I think they also believe it themselves, Jay. They think they're being scientific.

J: Yeah.

E: That's right, yeah.

B: That's a big part of it as well.

E: You bet they do.

J: So, Brewer said it wasn't just any story about paranormal investigators that made people believe in ghosts and haunted houses. It was a story about how they were scientific. So, he puts a big emphasis on the science there. And, the good news was that he said that they might look at this and say, "Well, all it takes is this sprinkle of some acronyms in there, and wave around a cool-looking thing that beeps, and suddenly people believe in ghosts and haunted houses." Now, the one cool thing about his research was, he also found that if, at the end of the article, there was a skeptical disclaimer that said "This is the skeptical perspective. This is why that investigation was wrong. This is the mistakes that they made and this is why these instruments are bogus."—if they threw that in there—it actually made the people believe in the claims a lot less.

R: What?

J: Yeah, it actually worked.

R: The thing that we're always complaining about—that, like, one sentence that presents –

S: The token skeptic?

E: The token skeptic, yeah.

R: – the entirety of skeptical opinion—that actually does make a difference?

J: Well, I don't want to – I don't want to say that the token skeptic 30-second B.S. blurb that they cut on most of the TV shows that we see works. The way that he presented it, it seemed a little bit like it had more teeth. It wasn't a quick thing. I think it was a little bit more of a takedown.

S: So, there was a series of studies about ten years ago, where they looked at the same thing—at the presentation of pseudoscience in a documentary and its effect on people's belief in the subject matter, like belief in UFOs or alien visitation—and they found some similar things in that, when it was presented scientifically, that absolutely increased belief. They also found that if, at any point in time, it was said—there was any kind of disclaimer saying—the following claims are true, or that the following claims may or may not be true, or whatever—anything positive or negative—reduced belief, or reduced the increase in belief, following the segment. So, anything that triggered people's questioning about, is it true or is it not true, was actually a good thing. But they found the opposite in that the token skepticism at the end—a scientist coming in at the end and saying, you know, "We've evaluated this, and it's not true", ''increased'' belief in the thing, because it lent legitimacy to the whole enterprise—the very fact that a scientist was spending their time and giving their attention to it.

J: Oh, yeah.

S: So –

B: Is that a cultural change –

S: Well, maybe –

B: – or is it the study?

S: Well, all right. I don't know. I don't know what the answer to that is. But, one possible interpretation may be that the ''token'' ineffective skepticism actually has a negative effect in raising belief in the paranormal because it's lending false legitimacy, but if you give ''effective'', you know, analysis—

B: Yeah.

S: —effective skeptical analysis—maybe you could reverse that and bring it back down.

J: Yeah, from from what the article said, it was, I think, an equal paragraph on the skeptical perspective –

S: Yes.

J: – and, specifically –

S: We really do have to argue for equal time and for getting the skeptical position –

J: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

S: – not the talking head blurb token skepticism may not – may still be counterproductive.

J: And the thing that he said was that there was that the article, the paragraph, did a takedown of the people that were claiming to be scientists.

S: Mm-hmm.

J: So, it stripped their expertise away, in essence.

S: Yeah. Yeah.

J: So, you know, I think it's interesting. I think that we're hard-wired for these things. I find, unfortunately, more and more TV programs—hey, you guys noticing, what's with the reality TV? Like, why is reality TV taking over television? Have you asked yourself that question?

S: 'Cause it's cheap.

E: It's cheap.

S: It's cheap, yeah.

(''applause'')

== Live Q&A (51:06) ==
* Questions from the CSICon audience

S: OK, we do have a few minutes for some Q&A. If you want to ask us a question—you can ask us anything. We won't necessarily answer, but you can ask—

Q1: Rebecca, I hate to break this to you, but NOC the beluga died five years ago.

R: God damn it!

J: Aww.

(''groans'')

R: God damn it, Tim Farley!

J: Tim Farley!

Q2: On a more serious note, Jay, apropos of what you said, I'm waiting for the skeptics community to have some reaction to the television show [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Island_Medium ''The Long Island Medium''] –

J: Oh.

S: Yeah.

Q2: – especially when she has kids on the program and she's telling them that, you know, she's talking to their dead parent.

J: Yeah, yeah. It's pathetic.

R: Oh. What a sick line.

S: I haven't brought myself to watch it yet. You know, I know it's out there. At some point, I think we probably should bite the bullet and then do an actual review, but I – the reports that I heard are, as you say, really abusive –

E: Yeah.

S: – very exploitative, not just that it's totally gullible nonsense. It's really exploitative. Yep.

Q3: Love your podcast, listen a lot. Always wondered whose voice says, "And now it's time for Science or Fiction".

J: That's changed over the years. The –

S: The current voice is –

R: It's Izzy.

S: – Izzy. Izzy.

J: Izzy Lawrence, yeah.

R: Izzy Lawrence. She has a podcast called [http://sundayssupplement.blogspot.com/ "Sundays Supplement"]. She's a skeptic and a stand-up comedian in England (''inaudible'').

S: So that's a genuine British accent, unlike some of the previous people who have said this.

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

S: Yes?

Q4: Yeah, with this – the Italian decision about the geologists and the – not predicting the volcano—or the earthquakes—there could – there's, like, a silver lining here. This could be a boon to the insurance industry, because maybe geologists and seismologists need to take out malpractice insurance.

J: Mm-hmm.

R: That's your "silver lining"? The insurance companies? Like, "Well, with all of this, I was really worried about the HMOs, but it looks like I'll be all right."

Q5: All right. Hi, guys! I love the podcast and I love everything you guys do. I'm –

S: Really? Everything we do? You don't know half the stuff that we do.

J: Yeah!

R: You don't want to know.

Q5: Certainly everything I'm aware that you guys do –

S: Oh, OK.

Q5: – and assume you do, which is really (''inaudible'')

S: Good caveat.

J: He hasn't seen [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1X1FOZmmVA "Occ: The Skeptical Caveman"] yet, so –

Q5: Oh, I certainly have!

J: Oh, and you like it?

Q5: Yeah, it's really good stuff!

R: Don't sound so surprised, Jay.

J: Just kidding.

Q5: Anyway. I'm a teaching assistant, and I help teach a lot of science courses—a lot of basic science courses—and we teach the scientific method—and most people understand the scientific method—but there's this other part that never gets explicitly put in there, like, this honesty and integrity built into it, like you need to make sure that the effect that you're trying to explain is really there, and that kind of stuff. Have you guys come up with a really good way to explain that part of science to people?

S: You mean that you just have to be ethical? Or you have to really care about the truth, I guess, is what you're saying?

Q5: Yes.

S: Yeah. I mean, I think—you're right, that is sort of implicit in the scientific process, that, you know, you're trying to find the actual answer, not just work backwards to the answer that you want to have—so, I think that's also implicit in scientific skepticism. I mean, that's part of – you know, one of our core values is, we want to know what's really ''really'' true, not just what ''seems'' to be true, and sometimes you have to dig really, really hard, and you have to be skeptical of your own conclusions. I mean, that ''is'' skepticism, I think, what you're saying. So, I think – combine that with the scientific method and you have scientific skepticism.

J: Yeah, but I think he was asking more about teaching the idea that you – we want to know the truth and be passionate about the truth –

S: Yeah.

J: – and I – it's a hard thing to teach, I think. I think that, you know, we're all kind of freakish in the idea that we're into skepticism. It's – it is something that you could teach your kids, absolutely. But, you know, how do you teach an adult to get into the truth, and get rid of all the garbage that's in their heads? It's hard, as, you know, as people get older, it's hard for them to learn that, I think. But I do agree with you. I think we need to inspire kids to—first off, teach them skepticism. Let's just start with that—I think that the caring will come with that.

== Science or Fiction (55:19) ==

S: Item number one. A new study finds that astronauts who spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. Item number two. Scientists have discovered the first feathered dinosaur in the western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers. And item number three. Researchers find that, at the molecular level, evolutionary changes can be highly predictable.

== Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:08:11) ==
<blockquote>Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.</blockquote>
J: Paul Kurtz!

{{Outro1}}

== References ==
<references/>

{{Navigation}}

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-17T12:15:51Z

Cornelioid: /* Live Q&A (51:06) */ proofread

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

RW: – a live edition of my favorite podcast and radio show. So, we're going to have Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Jay Novella, Even Bernstein, and – and a woman –

(''laughter'')

RW: – join us. It's the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe!

(''applause'')

S: Hello, and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

(''applause'')

S: Today is Thursday, October 25th, 2012, and we are live from [http://www.csiconference.org/ CSICon 2012].

(''applause'')

Joining me, as always, are Bob Novella –

B: Hey everybody!

(''cheers'')

S: – Rebecca Watson –

R: Hello, everyone!

(''cheers'')

''audience member'': I love you, Rebecca!

R: I love you, too!

S: – Jay Novella...Jay Novella –

J: Wooooo! Rebecca, yeah!

(''cheers'')

R: I love you, Jay!

S: – and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hello, Nashville!

(''cheers'')

S: So, how're you guys doing? How do you like Nashville?

J: It's awesome. I didn't – I thought people were going to literally be playing guitar when I got off the airplane.

B: Oh, come on, Jay.

S: Yeah, in the airport, you know?

J: Yeah.

== This Day in Skepticism (1:28) ==
November 3, 1957 Sputnik 2 launched

S: So, Rebecca, you always start us off with a This Day in Science and Skepticism. This show will be going up on November 3rd, so, did anything happen that day?

R: Nope.

(''laughter'')

B: Ever?

R: Oh, all right. One thing happened. One thing happened! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_2 Sputnik 2] happened.

S: ''Sputnik 2: The Revenge''.

(''laughter'')

R: ''Son of Sputnik''.

S: ''Son of Sputnik''.

J: ''Son of Sputnik''!

R: That's right. Sputnik 2 you might know as "the one that killed the puppy".

(''awwws'')

R: No? Aww, that's weird, 'cause I really thought that this would go over well at a live event! Yeah, Sputnik 2 is the craft that took Laika into orbit, Laika being the Soviet space dog who became the first animal in orbit—for about, like, 10 minutes, before she died.

E: Well, you know –

S: A couple of hours. It was a couple of hours. They thought he was going to survive for about ten days –

R: I think she's a "she".

S: – ''she'' was going to survive –

E: Eh.

R: Get it right, Steve!

S: You know, asexual Russian names, I mean, come on. But, they thought that Laika was going to survive for about ten days, but then they had a little mishap with the cooling system, and –

E: Oops.

S: Yeah. – got a little hot in the capsule—104 degrees, they said in (''inaudible'')

E: That'd be a hot dog. Yep.

(''groans'')

B: Oh, come on. My god.

E: Thank you. I'll be here all the weekend.

R: How – can we just take a moment, just to take a poll of the audience: How are our dead dog jokes doing? Good?

J: Yes!

(''applause'')

R: OK. All right. Yeah.

J: You know what? I didn't know until we researched this item that it was a one-way mission.

R: Yeah.

E: Mm-hmm.

J: That's really nasty.

S: Well, the capsule returned.

(''laughter'')

E: Yeah, well –

S: About 162 days later, it burned up in the atmosphere. But, yeah, they never intended to bring Laika back.

J: No, they actually were going to euthanize her with poison food after the tenth day, I think, right?

R: This is seriously the worst item ever. What was I thinking when I picked it?

S: There – there's Laika.

E: Aww. Aww.

R: Oh yeah! I didn't pick it! Steve forced me to!

E: But, we'd never know who this dog was if it didn't go on Sputnik 2, right? I mean, this would be an otherwise – another animal.

R: No, yeah, and I'm sure Laika appreciates the fame she gets from ''beyond the grave''.

E: She got her fifteen minutes.

== In Memorium ==
=== Paul Kurtz (3:45) ===
* 1925-2012

S: Well, we are going to start the new segment of the show with an ''in memoriam''. We do like to, on the ''Skeptic's Guide'', pause to remember those members of the skeptical community who have passed, and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] died several days ago, just the day before the organizers were coming down to the conference. He died on Sunday. He was 85 years old. It was 1925 to 2012, so that is 86. I can do math. (''audience laughter'') You'll know why i was confused in a moment.

R: 'Cause you're terrible at math?

S: Yes. So, before we get the show started, Ron Lindsay and Kendrick Frazier talked about Paul Kurtz. You know, he was one of the giants of the skeptical movement, of the skeptical community. You know, he was largely responsible for organizing the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, founding Prometheus Books, CFI, [http://www.secularhumanism.org/ Secular Humanism]. He was an academic, a philosopher. He really gave a lot of weight to the movement early on. He made it to that – he broke it to that next level. It wasn't that, you know, before he came on board. So he has to be remembered for that. We did have some interactions with Paul along the years. The first year that we started – (''audience cooing'')

R: Baby Steve!

E: Aww.

S: I was a little younger back then.

R: He's three years old there.

B: He's only half-grey there.

S: (''laughing'') I'm only half-grey!

E: A little less grey, yep.

S: You can mark my age by my greyness up until about ten years ago, when i went totally grey. Right when we got started, in 1996, you know, CSICOP, now CSI, you know, they were the big national skeptical organization. They'd definitely – They took us under their wing, you know, gave us their support, their local membership list, so that we could get our movement going. And i remember meeting Paul at the first World Skeptics Conference, and he was immediately—like, you know, your grandfather—like, you know, very, very comfortably took on that air of being a mentor. It's like, "Yeah, this is great. You're welcome to the skeptical movement." So i definitely remember him fondly in that way. A few years later, Paul organized a meeting of the local skeptical groups. In the picture here you can see me again with Bob, Perry, and Evan. The four of us came up together –

J: Now, if i remember correctly, Rebecca, you and i were off being badass somewhere else, right?

R: I think that's what was happening, yeah.

S: – and, i think, in the foreground, that's Colonel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Nickell Joe Nickell], isn't it?

E: Colonel.

S: Yeah, he had broke his leg in Spain, or something?

R: Round of applause for Colonel Joe Nickell!

E: I remember that.

(''applause'')

S: Joe actually is going to come up, and he's going to read a poem that he wrote, i believe, about Paul.

JN: Paul was a great supporter of the arts, and i hope he would have liked this. The poem is called "Book of Seasons: An elegy". (''Uncertain re: permission to reproduce poem'')

S: Thank you, Joe.

=== Leon Jaroff (7:34) ===
* 1926-2012

S: This same weekend, Saturday before the show, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_(magazine) Leon Jaroff] also died. ''He'' was 85, hence my confusion. So, Leon Jariff—not a big name in the skeptical community recently, and if you ask, you know, people at conventions like this if they knew who he was – I mean, in fact, right before the show Rebecca said to me, "Who's Leon Jaroff?"

R: (''indignant gasp'')

S: Sorry, Rebecca.

(''audience laughter'')

S: But he was perhaps one of the most skeptical journalists that we have had.

B: Yeah.

S: He was the science columnist for ''Time Magazine''. It was he who said, "You know, popularizing science is important, you know, we should start a science-dedicated magazine." And that was ''Discover Magazine''. That was him. He was not afraid to be a hard-nosed skeptic when writing about scientific issues. So, for example, when writing about chiropractors, [http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,213482,00.html he wrote],

<blockquote>
Chiropractors also employ a bewildering variety of weird practices to diagnose their patients. Some use applied kinesiology, a muscle test that supposedly can diagnose allergies and diseased organs. Hair analysis and iris readings are commonplace in the profession. Even sillier are many of the treatments that chiropractors use and recommend: homeopathic potions, colon irrigation, magnetic therapy, enzyme pills, colored-light therapy, and something called "balancing body energy," among other mystical procedures with undocumented effects.
</blockquote>

S: That's from a mainstream journalist writing in ''Time Magazine''. Do we see this kind of thing today? I don't think so.

B: Nope.

(''audience applause'')

S: So, you know, we do have to, I think, also note the support that Jaroff gave to such a good science journalism, and that kind of hard-nosed, skeptical science journalism is definitely something we miss. That's a void that, I think, that we in the skeptical community have to fill, but, unfortunately, it is a void.

== News Items ==
=== Big Bang Conference at CERN (9:31)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19870036 Big Bang and religion mixed in Cern debate]

S: Rebecca –

R: Yes!

S: – this is a different quote. It's not as good a quote.

<blockquote>
Science in isolation is great for producing stuff, but not so good for producing ideas.
</blockquote>

R: Mm-hmm.

S: Who said that?

R: That was said by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Pinsent Andrew Pinsent] at the Ramsey Center for Science and Religion. What I particularly liked about this quote is that it is completely reversed – it is the exact opposite of what I would have suggested.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I would say that science is actually really good at ideas, but, in order to produce stuff, you have to add something else. You know, like, they might be able to figure out lasers, but to make a CD player you need a marketing executive.

S: Or death ray.

R: Thank you. Yeah, of course. Why didn't I go there first?

(''laughter'')

R: Yeah, so, this quote comes from a recent article that the BBC produced: "Big Bang and religion mixed in CERN debates". Apparently, there was a conference recently that CERN held—you remember CERN, you know, the guys who, apparently, may have found –

J: Higgs!

R: – the Higgs boson.

S: A boson with Higgs-like properties.

R: A Higgs-like thing.

S: Boson, yeah.

R: A Higgish. I like "Higgish" –

B: "Higgish"?

R: – a little bit.

J: (''laughing'') "A little bit!"

S: "Higgy"?

B: (''singing, inaudible'') ''Higgy again."

R: So, yes. Apparently, I don't know the purpose – I don't know what, who dreamt this up, but what I'm thinking is that someone was concerned that they may have found a particle that many people know as the "God particle", and, so, they're concerned that they're going to be excommunicated or, you know, that people will rebel—religious people will rebel—against science. Basically, we'll have some sort of Dark Ages–esque thing happening, and, so, maybe somebody at CERN thought, "Well, we should have this conference where we talk about how religious people should be OK with the Higgs boson."

B: Mm-hmm.

R: So, those are the good intentions that I'm assuming are behind this conference that has speakers such as this. The quotes in here are pretty fun, and none of them have any amount of intelligence to them. Steve, you're the one who brought this one to my attention here –

S: Yes.

R: I'm interested in what – we've talked a little bit before about things like the Templeton Foundation, which is an organization that gives out a prize – gives out prizes to people who can explore science in a religious context, basically. And I'm a bit opposed to it. I feel like it's muddying the waters. I think we don't ''need'' to bring religion into what people are doing at CERN.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I think those two things are happily separated, but I'm interested in knowing your feelings on this.

S: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think trying to introduce theology into science is misguided. You know, this conference was specifically about the origin of the universe. So, it's not just about scientific issues in particular. I think the thinking, at least on the part of the theologians who were quoted about this conference, is that, well, you're talking about the origin of the universe. That's a really big question, and religion is about answering the really big questions—not science. Science is narrow and reductionist, and makes stuff, but can't really grapple with the big questions of our origins. And that's exactly incorrect, as you were saying. That's a complete knock to science. I mean, science is, in fact, the only human intellectual endeavor that ''can'' answer any empirical question about the origin of the universe.

R: Yeah.

J: So, was the conference, though, the scientists trying to appease religious people? The saying that –

R: Well, you know, apparently, this was – the conference was done on the part of CERN, according to BBC, and that's what I find troubling. I'm totally OK with a conference that religious people host, you know, and the topic might be "How do we –" you know, "How do we consider our theology now that we know ''X'', ''Y'', and ''Z''—now that science has discovered this? What does that mean for ''our'' belief system?" And I think that's fine, but, you know, apparently, the theologians who were there seem to think that this was a chance to ''debate'' the scientists –

J: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

R: – and, no! Why would you do that? Debate is completely the opposite direction of where you want to go.

S: It also – I mean, the quotes seem to me like a desperate grasp at relevance, trying to make it seem like they're – you know, that theology is still relevant to questions about origins of the universe, when, in fact, science has completely displaced it from that endeavor.

J: So, did it end up with, like, a fistfight? Like, what happened?

(''laughter'')

E: Science won.

R: I haven't found any evidence of any arrests, so, apparently –

S: There were no fisticuffs?

J: That really must've been awkward as hell, though, right? Like, they're like, sitting there, like, after a whole day, and they're like, "Uh, OK, it's over now."

E: Something tells me they're not going to be doing this again. They're going to learn from this.

S: I don't know.

R: Well, I mean, it's actually not even – like, I wish it had been that exciting. But, instead, it just seems like it was really ''boring'' –

E: Yeah.

R: – and nobody came to ''any'' conclusions. Because you ''can't'', you know?

S: Yeah.

R: You're just having a discussion of, like, well, you know, "But what don't we know?"

=== Italian Earthquake Scientists Convicted (14:57)===
* [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/22/us-italy-earthquake-court-idUSBRE89L13V20121022 Italian scientists convicted over earthquake warning]

S: Now, we're trying to keep – we like to keep our live shows really light –

(''laughter'')

E: So far, so good.

S: So, we thought we'd talk about a horrible earthquake that killed over three hundred people.

E: Yeah, let's go there.

R: Good intro. Good intro there.

S: But there's actually a better story embedded in that. There were six Italian scientists, who were recently convicted of manslaughter –

B: Yeah.

S: – for failure to properly communicate the warnings about the upcoming L'Aquila earthquake in 2009. Yeah, we've been following this story, you know, since it happened. The quick version is that there were a number of small tremors in this very earthquake-prone part of Italy, and the geologists—the local geologists—you know, were following it. And their opinion was that, well, these tremors are very common. Most such tremors are not followed by major quakes. Most major quakes are not preceded by these kinds of tremors. So, the probability of a major quake occurring is not particularly higher, you know, now, just because of these tremors, than at any time, and, therefore, there's no cause for alarm. Now, they were specifically asked during a press conference, "Should we panic?" You know, "Should we evacuate?" And they said "No. There's no reason to evacuate. Stay at home and drink a glass of wine."

B: Steve, was this about a year ago that we covered this?

S: 2009. 2009 –

B: Oh, wow. (''inaudible'')

S: – so, was the quake, and then the court trial started about a year ago, and now the decision came down that the six scientists were convicted to six years – I think six years in prison and something like, you know, millions of dollars in damages for manslaughter—for the deaths of the people who didn't evacuate because they – of their reassurances that there was nothing to be worried about.

R: That's horrific.

J: Well, i, you know, to play devil's advocate real quick, if there was true negligence—like, if they didn't follow through with things that they needed to do, if they did a terrible job at analyzing the data, in a fashion that – where the data could have been analyzed better, or they actually weren't asking their peers for the information—i can understand if there was extreme negligence.

S: Right.

J: But, even still, like, that's very hard to prove, and I just don't understand –

S: Well, I mean, not really. The question is, was their opinion within the standard for their profession? That's—in my opinion—that's the only real question here. You can't be blamed for being wrong, right? You can't be blamed for a bad outcome if you were following the standard. Now, of course, scientists can't predict earthquakes. You can't predict when an earthquake is going to occur. That's the bottom line. What – every statement they said was truthful, you know, every factual statement. "These tremors do not necessarily mean that there's an earthquake coming, and they are not a reason to evacuate. We don't evacuate every city where there's tremors because there might be a major quake, because it's not that predictive." So, that was not negligent. No, and they weren't really being accused of negligence. They were basically being accused of poorly communicating to the public. It seems to be based on a lot of false premises about what scientists ''can know''—what an expert about, you know, an earthquake, a geologist, expert ''can know''.

R: Yeah, they've been convicted for not using a magical power they don't have.

S: Yeah.

R: They might as well have convicted all the psychics in Italy for not accurately predicting this earthquake.

J: I think we need to be careful—i don't disagree, of course. I don't think that these men should be going to jail for this at all—but it is an important thing to state that, I think, people should go to prison, or get in trouble ''legally'', if they are misrepresenting science or – right? So you see where I'm going with this.

S: Well, yeah. If you are –

J: If you're setting that premise—you're saying, "Hey, these guys screwed up, they didn't do what they were supposed to do, they didn't communicate to us the real possible outcomes here", whatever—and, like –

S: Yeah.

J: – I'll reiterate, I don't think that they should be going to jail—

B: Well, I don't agree –

J: —but, I do think, though, that that standard that that court set needs to be applied all the way down the ladder.

B: Yeah, but, Jay, like, someone saying that "I have a cure for cancer and it's scientifically proven" but it's a sham?

J: Exactly, right? So, if they're going to actually take those scientists out and say "You're done. You're not performing science anymore and you're going to jail for that bad decision or information you gave", well, hello! Then, you know, all of a sudden, a million lawsuits need to be filed.

S: But, it wasn't – to clarify, though, it wasn't ''bad'', it was just ''unlucky''. I mean, doctors encounter this all the time, you know. You are asked to decide, you know, what tests to order, what diagnoses a patient might have. There's a whole lot of liability involved with that. You can't be convicted of malpractice just because of a bad outcome if what you did was within the standard of care.

B: Right.

S: So, was the information they were giving to the public within the standard for the profession? If the answer is "yes", the fact that there was a low-probability earthquake the next week is not their fault.

E: Right.

S: It doesn't change the fact – you know, if they're saying there's a 99% chance that there's not going to be an earthquake, and then the 1% thing happens, they were still right –

J: Yeah.

S: – in saying that it was unlikely.

R: Yeah.

E: Didn't the evidence show, basically, that they performed correctly, essentially? They did not –

S: That's the consensus. I mean, so, there's worldwide outrage, especially among the scientific community (''inaudible'') –

B: This has got to be shot down in a higher court.

S: Yeah.

B: This can't – can't possibly stand.

E: I hope so.

S: Well, there's two appeals left. There's two appeals, and they will stay out of prison before those appeals. So, the United States National Academy of Science, the Royal Academy of Science—the Royal Society, rather—issued a joint statement saying that "that is why we must protest the verdict in Italy. If it becomes a precedent in law, it could lead to a situation in which scientists will be afraid to give expert opinion."

J: Yeah, that's devastating.

E: Mm-hmm.

S: So, it would have a chilling effect. What – you know, what geologist is going to, you know, talk to the public in Italy now, if you could wind up in jail and, you know, financially devastated, and your career devastated, because you can't predict the future, you know, because you don't have a crystal ball? It's insane. It's insane.

J: Yeah. To think that they're going after these scientists, and they're not going after the rampant quackery throughout –

S: Well, there's that, too.

E: I wonder how much pressure they came under from, like, the families, the survivors, of this terrible, terrible devastation –

J: Oh yeah, they had to hang someone.

E: – and I imagine they put a lot of pressure on politicians and other people in order to hold ''somebody'' accountable.

J: They have to. They had to send someone down the river for that.

B: Did they have a trial?

S: Yeah.

B: Did they have witnesses and experts coming in?

S: Yeah. Yep.

B: I'd love to know the details of what exactly happened, because how could –

(''laughter'')

S: So, we'll see if the worldwide backlash has an effect. I mean, again, they do have two appeals left, so we'll definitely follow it.

=== Whale Makes Human Sounds (21:35)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20026938 Beluga whale 'makes human-like sounds']

S: All right, Rebecca, so, we have a cute animal –

R: Thank you.

S: – we're going to talk about now.

J: This is a happy one!

R: Just tell me this narwhal or whatever is alive.

S: It's a whale.

E: It's alive and well.

S: It's a beluga whale.

B: It sort of looks like a narwhal.

R: Tell me this beluga is alive!

E: That's NOC the beluga. They're very much alive.

R: It's not a beluga?

E: "NOC". N-O-C.

S: "NOC". NOC the beluga.

R: Oh! "That's NOC."

(''laughter'')

R: I was about to say, "No, ''that is a beluga''."

S: Sounds like a children's song.

E: It does sound like a children's –

S: Evan, sing it.

E: No.

S: OK.

J: Don't change it! Please don't –

E: If my daughter was here, maybe. But, no. So, what's important about NOC the beluga? Well, OK, so, picture this: You are part of the National Marine Mammal Foundation, OK, and you're in the tank, swimming around with the whales and stuff, and, all of a sudden, you hear somebody—you hear a voice—call your name. Something to the effect that – "Get out of the water! Get out of the water!" So, you're in the tank and you come up and you say, "OK, who told me to get out of the water? Who told me to get out of the water?" And the other scientists and people are looking around you like, "Nobody? What the heck are you talking about?" And, he's like, "Well, I definitely ''heard'' that!" Well, what did he actually hear? Well, apparently, NOC the beluga made some noises very reminiscent of human noises. Beluga whales are, you know, incredible creatures. Their calls – They're known as the canaries of the sea. They have a very high-frequency, high-pitched tone to their noises that they make, but they make lots of different kinds of noises. They can emit up to eleven different kinds of sounds—crackles, whistles, trills, squawks—all sorts of things. But, it's been rumored that these whales can emit noises that sound like humans talking. And, for the first time, they've actually recorded NOC the whale making these noises, and they have it on tape. And we have it on tape.

R: Nah.

(''NOC makes unnervingly human-sounding noises'')

R: Did he maybe just swallow a kazoo?

(''laughter'')

J: Everybody has a drunk neighbor that makes those noises.

(''laughter'')

E: Oh, gosh. Who knows what the heck he was saying? You know, dolphins have been taught to mimic noises that kind of sound like human voices, but, before this, there's been no record of an animal ''spontaneously'' coming up and making these kinds of noises. This is the first evidence, the first hard evidence we have of it.

R: Here's – I have a theory. I have a theory. I have a theory that – so, whales, in general, are incredibly intelligent –

E: Oh yeah.

R: – possibly as smart as us, but they don't want thumbs, or any way to talk to us –

E: Or fire.

R: – and I feel like they do, basically – That's true. No, I saw Spongebob once. There was fire under the sea. I think it can be done.

S: Yep, but they don't have nanotechnology, though.

R: They don't. So, my theory is that whales are basically, like – they have – it's like they have locked-in syndrome, you know? Where they're just –

J: Oh, no.

R: – super-intelligent, and there's all these people around them, and they're just messing with them –

J: So, he was screaming, actually –

R: Yeah! And, so, he's been like, his whole life, he's been in this stupid little – like, he's in captivity, right? So, he's been in this stupid little aquarium, and he's just, like, "I hate all of you! And I'm going to will myself to tell you, because you're too stupid to understand!"

E: So, basically, what's going on here is, the whale has learned to change – rapidly change pressure within its naval cavity in order to create these sounds. And, it hasn't – the whale is able to over-inflate what's known as its vestibular sac in its blowhole, which is normally acts to stop water from basically coming in. So, the whale is going through a lot of, you know, effort, essentially, to try to make these noises. And I'm sure they're going to be trying to figure out exactly, you know, basically, ''why'' is the whale doing this?

S: Well, he just – this whale was – did spend his life in captivity –

E: Yeah.

S: – so, he did hear human speech a lot, and maybe he's just, to some extent, mimicking the sounds that he grew up hearing his whole life.

J: It's definitely – it definitely has a human sound to it, in the cadence and everything.

S: Yeah.

J: I mean, he's intelligent enough to mimic a human, which is really cool.

R: Yeah.

J: And, then, you always think, you know, if he can mimic a human—if his brain is advanced that much—you know, maybe he –

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But, is he mimicking humans or making fun of humans? You know, like people make fun of other languages?

R: Yeah, he's just like "Weh! Weh! Weh! This is what you sound like!"

E: Yeah. You stupid bald monkey and (''inaudible'')! Get out of here!

B: Sounds like a false dichotomy.

=== PANDAS Controversy (26:18)===
* [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/a-pandas-story/ A PANDAS Story]

S: So, we're going to talk about – going from talking about beluga whales to talking about PANDAS! Except, we're not talking about pandas, because we're talking about –

E: Wait.

R: Stop toying with my emotions, Steve!

S: I had to put a cute picture of a panda up there for you, Rebecca. We are talking about pediatric autoimmune –

R: It makes sense.

S: – neuropsychiatric disorder associated with –

E: I didn't know PANDA was an acronym. Cool!

R: Steve, I miss the panda.

S: – streptococcal infection—or, PANDAS. See? There's a panda.

(''laughter, cooing'')

E: Aww!

R: Yay.

S: We're talking about PANDAS –

E: Aww.

R: Boo.

J: Oh.

E: That's worse.

S: – which is a legitimately controversial medical diagnosis! So, essentially, what happens is, children suddenly develop ticks—like Tourette syndrome—and psychiatric disorders—obsessive–compulsive disorder—and it is thought that, in some cases, that it is actually – the inciting event is an infection—bacteria—streptococcal infection. Now, of course, it's always difficult to establish the reality of a new disease. Unless you get all your ducks in a row, and all the, you know, pathology all adds up, it's sometimes difficult to identify a legitimate new syndrome and to prove that – cause and effect. So, correlation is one thing. As we know, correlation is not ''necessarily'' causation. And, so, the syndrome exists. There are – the number of physicians who have identified the sudden onset psychiatric – neuropsychiatric disorder, and in some cases it is temporally associated with a streptococcal infection. But that's not the same thing as saying that the strep infection ''caused'' the neuropsychiatric syndrome. So, that's – and there's the controversy. Now, of course, we live in the modern Internet age. So, as soon as a scientist says, "I think that there's this syndrome—I want to call it PANDAS—and – sort of, you know, a psychiatric syndrome provoked by a bacterial infection", of course, there are now support groups, and there's groups on the Internet, and there's patient groups supporting this diagnosis before the science is even settled. And, then, of course, once that happens, when you try to do more science, or have any kind of discussion about whether or not this is a real syndrome, you have parents and patient groups and advocacy groups, you know, calling you all kinds of nasty names and saying there's a conspiracy against people with PANDAS, it's all the insurance companies and Big Pharma and evil doctors or whatever. So, that's the situation that we're in the middle of right now, unfortunately, is that, before the science is settled, you know, there's the scientific controversy, then there's the public controversy. This came to the media attention recently because of a 16-year-old girl called Elizabeth Wray. She developed, you know, a syndrome like PANDAS with ticks and psychological disorders, was diagnosed by a physician with PANDAS, and then was transferred to Boston's Children's Hospital for – presumably for further treatment of PANDAS. Now, the story that is going around the PANDAS community is that once she got to Boston University—or Boston Children's Hospital—she was told – the parents were told, "We don't believe that PANDAS is real – that it exists", and then they essentially admitted their daughter to the psychiatric unit and started treating her with psychiatric medications. Now, I don't know if that's true, because the doctors and the hospital are not telling their side of the story because of patient confidentiality. So, we don't know what their side of the story is. We only know the parents' side of the story, filtered through the PANDAS community. Unfortunately, now there's – this story has taken on a life of its own. There's a Free Elizabeth Wray movement going on within the PANDAS community, they're telling all kinds of horror stories about Boston Children's Hospital, and, you know, we can't verify any of it. What's interesting in reading about it is that each side has their narrative—and I wrote about this on Science-Based Medicine—because one of the things that – the ideas that we're wrestling with in the skeptical community is that—well, all right, we have, I think, a good approach to critical thinking, we understand a lot about self-deception, about the nature of science and pseudoscience—but we don't always have a good story to tell the public, or we have a hard time convincing mainstream outlets that we have – that our story is an interesting and good one. You know, we have to really market our narrative—the skeptical narrative. When you read about stories like this, the PANDAS proponents have a really compelling emotional narrative. It may be total B.S.—i don't know—but it's very compelling. They have a story of a child suffering from an unusual disease, parents who just want to do what's right for her—I believe all those things are correct—and then they are, essentially, being abused by a dismissive and skeptical medical establishment who doesn't believe in this disease, and that is treating their child with perhaps harmful, you know, psychiatric medications. They even – this went to court. Apparently, the hospital thought that the parents were being negligent in not allowing them to give proper standard of care—psychiatric treatment—to their child, and they wanted to have custody taken away from the parents, and they wanted to admit Elizabeth to a locked psychiatric ward—again, not sure – I can't verify those from the hospital's side of things. A judge – a Massachusetts judge essentially made her a ward of the state while they sorted out what was going on, but they did not grant the hospital their request to treat her in the way that they wanted to. So, they essentially just – the state took her out of everybody's hands for a moment – for the moment. So, it's interesting. Of course, the PANDAS community, again, is up in arms, you know. The court essentially took custody away from these parents that are only trying to do what's right for their daughter. But, of course, you could see the other narrative—you know, let's assume that the physicians think that—even if you think – whether or not you think PANDAS really exists—they think that she has a psychiatric illness, the parents are in denial, they're pursuing this false diagnosis, and they're, you know, refusing standard medical care. That's a story, too.

B: What if you just pulled out the whole strep association, and just treat it like a "pandisorder"? Is their beef that it's associated with strep, and they don't think there's any association? Why don't they just treat it like a neuropsychiatric disorder –

S: Yeah.

B: – and forget about the whole strep association?

S: Well, because the strep association would lead you to treat with things like antibiotics. So, that's the question: Should you treat it with antibiotics, or should you treat her like a psychiatric (''inaudible'') patient?

J: Why not both? I mean, why wouldn't you –

S: Well, she has had at least one round of antibiotics. You can also treat it like an autoimmune disease, with, like, intravenous globulin, for example. So, I mean, these are real medical questions. Do we treat it like an infection, do we treat it like a post-infectious auto-immune disease, or do we treat it like a psychiatric disorder? Those are real questions.

J: Steve, are you saying pandas don't exist? Let me just get this straight.

(''laughter'')

S: So, well, I did – to give a serious answer to your sarcastic question, I did –

R: My favorite kind.

S: – take the opportunity – I'm good that way. I'm good that way. I did take the opportunity just to familiarize myself with the PANDAS literature—again, I always emphasize, I'm no an expert in this, but I can read the literature and give my opinion like a science journalist—i think it's genuinely controversial. When I read the research, there's lots of – the ducks are not in a row. So, when you do things like treat kids who apparently have PANDAS with antibiotics in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, they don't necessarily improve. And, if you look for the antibodies that are supposed to be there, they don't necessarily correlate with the disease onset or with the existence of strep. So –

B: So, this is clearly not like autism and vaccines. It's just more complicated than that.

S: So, no. So, right. So, autism and vaccines, like, I would say, that's been studied enough to say that autism's – that autism is not caused by vaccines. We can say that. We can make the negative statement. I cannot make the negative statement that PANDAS does not exist, only that the research so far has not reached the threshold where we can agree that it does exist and that there is some actual negative data—there's some positive data, too—so it's legitimately controversial. It did remind me, though, of the chronic Lyme disease controversy—

R: Yeah.

S: —which is very common in New England—again, where they think that a number of symptoms, including neurological symptoms, can be caused by a bacterial infection and treated with antibiotics. And the same – there's a lot of overlap in those two communities, you know.

J: Steve, are you saying that the public has unrealistic expectations?

S: Well, I think – it's partly that. I mean, I think the public is uncomfortable with the uncertainty, and they like this sort of hero–villain narrative, so they paint the medical community as the villains, and—except for those maverick physicians who understand. They're Lyme-literate, or they understand PANDAS, so they're the heroes—and, then, the insurance companies don't want to pay for, you know, over-and-over recurrent courses of IV antibiotics, so they're the villains, you know. They're not—I'm not defending insurance companies, but sometimes they actually – sometimes they're right. They don't want to pay for things that are not science-based or evidence-based. So, it's complicated. And, you know, how do we – so, how do we deal with a child with this disorder when we don't know what the best scientific answer is—we don't know if it's autoimmune, infectious, or psychiatric? We just have to, you know, do the best we can—and there may be different physicians who would take different approaches—but to portray it as "PANDAS definitely exists. If you don't believe in it, you're dismissive and you're mean and evil, or you're protecting some kind of Big Pharma grant that you're getting"—they always bring that up—rather than saying, "You know, we really want to know the right answer, but we just haven't found it yet. It's still – it's legitimately controversial."

J: Yeah, I think what you're saying does confirm what I was thinking, is that the public wants an answer, science is not yet done figuring this one out, and –

S: Yeah. Like the earthquake one, right?

J: Yeah.

S: Sometimes the answer is, "We don't know yet", you know. "We need to do more research". In medicine, we have to make decisions with imperfect, you know, information, so, you know.

J: Wouldn't it be typical, too – like, let's say that this is happening over and over again –

S: Yeah.

J: – like, at some point, some doctors are going to come up with different ideas, they're going to try it out, you know. The trial-and-error process happens, and—i hate to say it, but—this girl is probably going to be one of the people that gets tested on with new ideas.

S: Well, I mean – well, if you're really testing then you should be doing a research protocol. If you're just applying the best knowledge that we have to an individual patient, that's – a certain amount of trial and error with that that's not really experimentation. So, there is a difference there. So, I don't know. The other interesting question that I'm kind of alluding to is, what role do the patient or the advocacy groups play? I think, a lot of times, that they are helpful in raising awareness for a disease or a disorder and raising funding, and advocating for patients. You know, I've seen, I think, there's a lot of very effective, very good patient advocacy groups out there. But, sometimes, they put their nickel down on a specific scientific answer, and that's not their job.

J: Yeah.

S: It's not their job to predict or demand that science give them the answer they want. And, you know, unfortunately, some people want the answer to be "an infection"—not "genes", not, you know, "We don't know".

J: Yeah. It's curable. That's the one they want.

S: Of course, who – that's the answer I would want to have! "It's something outside that is, you know, foreign, that can be cured, and that can reverse my child to the way that they were". Who – every parent wants that to be the answer, but sometimes you – you know, you have to step back from what you want and listen to the evidence. That's the – that's the scientist's, that's the physician's job, you know. You should just let them do their job, you know.

J: All right, so, I want to bring up a quick side point on this.

S: Yeah.

J: So, as an example, let's say, fifty years ago, let's say this was happening. What stance do you think the public would have differently than what we're seeing today?

S: It's the same, and this ''did'' happen fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, you know, she would be diagnosed with neurosyphilis—maybe not somebody who was sixteen, but that was the stand-in for what we now would, you know, the same subculture would diagnose with chronic Lyme. There were believers in that. There were physicians who believed in treatments like chelation therapy, you know, and science proved it wrong, and they said, "Well, we don't care, we're going to still do it. We're going to come up with – We're just going to keep coming up with special pleading and alternate theories, and form our own societies and our own – and just keep doing it, and say that it's all a conspiracy."

J: Mm-hmm.

S: So, but, I think that it's just the turnaround time is so much faster because of the Internet. Like, another example: CCSVI, right? The alleged blockage in the veins that drained blood from the brain, causing multiple sclerosis. It's that – that whole process—of Dr. Zamboni proposing this entity and a treatment, to it being researched, to it being refuted, to, you know, patient advocacy groups springing up and calling for conspiracies and calling for research and demanding that science give them the answer that they want—all has taken place within a few years. We've seen that cycle happen right before our eyes. So, the Internet is just making it happen a lot quicker and a lot bigger, I think. But it's always been this way.

J: So do you have any ideas on what we could do? Could the skeptical community do anything to help this (''inaudible'')?

S: Well, I think what we do is, we discuss the issue from a science, logical, critical thinking point of view, you know. We point out the role of science in this, and we, I think, we try to bring the public discourse to a level that can deal with it in a more productive way, rather than the conspiracy mongering, sort of lowest-common-denominator that it would otherwise sink to.

J: Yeah.

=== Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44)===
* pnd

S: Well, let's move on. Jay, we're talking about how the media presents stories about paranormal activities.

J: Yeah, this is interesting. So, a professor decided to—Professor Brewer decided that—because what we're seeing over the years is a very obvious interest, in the general public, to news articles, and to TV shows, that talk about ghosts—and, you know, we've all seen the ''Ghost Hunter'' TV show—and, to people like us, at best, we watch it, and it's fun, right? 'Cause it's ridiculous and entertaining, and we like to see people from our perspective—a skeptical perspective—they're acting foolishly. But, there are a lot of people that are watching this, and they're riveted. Like, they really love it and they think a lot of it's real—and, I'm sure, to a certain degree, I can't say everyone that watches it and thinks everything about it is real—but, in the end, there's a huge entertainment factor there, and, unfortunately, to us skeptics, we feel like there's a lot of people that simply believe it, and that's their favorite entertainment. And I know a lot of people—I'm friends with a lot of people—that literally have active discussions on Facebook all the time, that I dip into, that are talking about the latest TAPS show. It would be be, "Can you believe it?" and "I knew that place was haunted!", and they're like, you know, getting whooped up.

S: I don't get it. I just don't get it. Nothing happens!

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

R: That's not true! That's not true.

E: Like "Seinfeld", yeah.

S: But, I mean, but they never find a ghost.

R: Steve, Steve. Did you feel that?

(''laughter'')

R: That happens! That happens all the time.

(''applause'')

R: They feel so much.

J: The thing is, you know –

S: I want to see a [http://www.hark.com/clips/pnzwffccqk-10-people-witnessed-a-free-floating-full-torso-vaporous-apparition full, floating torso] drift across the camera lens. Then I'll be impressed.

B: I still won't believe it. (''inaudible'')

S: No, but at least it'll be entertaining.

J: A lot of the shows, though, they're all right on the cusp, you know, of the noise, right? They're always right on that cusp. They're always ''just'' seeing something, or something falls over, you know? Or there's a noise from upstairs, or whatever, and it's never – they never give you that, you know? You don't get that –

R: This, actually – this came up—tomorrow I'll be talking about the [http://paranormalroadtrip.org/ paranormal road trip] that I just went on with [http://www.jonronson.com/ Jon Ronson] and [http://richardwiseman.wordpress.com/ Richard Wiseman] that got us here—and, at one of the stops, we were at a – we did talk to someone in a "haunted museum", and she was telling us that "the ghost hunters were there, and it was very exciting because there was a noise in the attic, and there were steps (''step sounds'') even though nobody was up there, and so the ghost hunter ran over and climbed up the ladder and looked into the attic, and, just then, a lady, dressed all in white, came ''flying at him'', and he shrieked in horror and fell down the ladder, and it was all really dramatic", and we were just completely blown away, obviously. We were riveted –

E: Yeah, well.

R: – and we said, "We cannot ''wait'' to see that footage!"

(''groans'')

R: – and she said, "Actually, I mean, it was so good, they didn't actually get that on camera.

B: Darn it!

R: No, all the cameras were down in another room somewhere."

J: Yeah, of course.

E: Well.

S: That was like –

R: "There's literally no evidence of it", though. Yeah.

S: – Ed Warren. We were investigating Ed Warren. He told us this story of being in a haunted house, and they had a local news crew over there, and, like, for two hours, they videotaped things flying around the room, you know, like, I say, really impressive, you know, smoking-gun evidence of paranormal activity. We're like, "Great! Can we see that footage?"

E: Sure!

J: "Yeah!"

S: "You know what? They taped over it for the news segment later that night."

(''laughter'')

S: Go figure. Stupid news crew.

J: So, I – I'm going to ask a couple of questions that I want you guys to not answer right now, but just think about it, 'cause these are pretty obvious questions, but I think they're interesting. "Why do people believe, or like to believe, in the paranormal? What's the attraction?" It's an interesting question if you think about it. There are people that ''really'' seek it out and love it. And there's something exciting about it. There's something kind of visceral about it. To my mind—to a skeptical mind—I don't have a connection to it. I just don't see what that allure is, other than, maybe—because I do like horror movies, and I do like to get scared. I love being actually scared sitting in a movie theater. It doesn't happen that often, but when it does happen it's very thrilling—and, maybe they're just having a lot of those thrilling moments. It's easier for them to get scared.

R: But, also, I mean, don't you think, maybe, it's got something to do with the fact that, maybe, we're not going to rot in the ground and die and never see our loved ones again...? Maybe?

J: Maybe? It's – you know, I'm not going to say no, but when I think about it, there's something thrilling about it. I'm not thinking, as I'm being thrilled in a horror movie, "Oh, I'm defying death by being thrilled right now!" That's not happening. I'm just – there is something – it's like, you know, eating something really spicy that hurts.

S: Yeah, but to –

J: It hurts, but it's good at the same time, right?

E: Uh.

S: To a lot of people, definitely, you know, evidence of ghosts is evidence of the afterlife. That's the appeal.

R: Yeah, and when we talk to people who describe their own experiences often—they're talking about Grandma and Grandpa and whatnot coming back to them and telling them that it's all OK—you know, and they're very comforting messages –

E: Yeah, which is why –

S: They want a narrative.

E: Which is why they watch these shows. It reinforces these positions that these people have, you know, and they derive a certain, you know, need out of it.

J: I wonder, though, because those shows are ''so bad''! They're so bad. Can they really be, you know?

R: I mean, there's a lot of – No, no, no! Personally, I would derive a lot of happiness from knowing that my dearly beloved grandmother, who I adored when I was young—she died when I was young—I would get so much happiness knowing that she was just screwing around with asshole ghosthunters on TV. Just, like, brushing past them and then disappearing whenever the cameras come out you know? That would give me a lot of satisfaction, knowing that.

J: Well, maybe the skeptical version of it is watching a YouTube video of Hitchens just tearing some moron apart, right? That's our version of that?

E: That releases endorphins, yeah.

J: 'Cause that makes me believe in something, right?

E: Yeah.

J: It gives me a thrill, but – OK, anyways. So, there is an article we're talking about here. So, Dr. Paul Brewer, who is – teaches at the University of Deleware, developed a study that was recently published in the journal ''Science: Communication'' that examines the influence of the media on the public's perception of the paranormal. So, here is his test: He took four news articles that were similar to each other, but they had significant differences in some of the details. The essence of it was, he had an article on one end of the spectrum that described a paranormal effect with a paranormal investigator, and they were using instruments to measure things, or whatever. And, then, as you go down to the fourth article, the fourth article gets very descriptive about using, you know, faux scientific language to make the paranormal investigators sound scientifically-minded, and using scientific tools. And, what he found was, the more of the faux science that was in the article, the more that the people believed that the paranormal accounts were true. You know, it's kind of a kick in the gut for us skeptics, because—and for us scientists, because—they're using our lingo, and our vernacular, and the way that we go about presenting data, and they're fooling people with it—because, I think, the general public is trained to a certain degree to recognize scientific language and recognize the formality of science—and they're using that—and I don't know how deliberate it is. Maybe they figured it out for the TV shows, that, you know, "hey, the more we B.S. this, the more we make this meter look cool and we throw in, you know, technical jargon, the more people that are going to be interested in our TV show"—

B: I think they also believe it themselves, Jay. They think they're being scientific.

J: Yeah.

E: That's right, yeah.

B: That's a big part of it as well.

E: You bet they do.

J: So, Brewer said it wasn't just any story about paranormal investigators that made people believe in ghosts and haunted houses. It was a story about how they were scientific. So, he puts a big emphasis on the science there. And, the good news was that he said that they might look at this and say, "Well, all it takes is this sprinkle of some acronyms in there, and wave around a cool-looking thing that beeps, and suddenly people believe in ghosts and haunted houses." Now, the one cool thing about his research was, he also found that if, at the end of the article, there was a skeptical disclaimer that said "This is the skeptical perspective. This is why that investigation was wrong. This is the mistakes that they made and this is why these instruments are bogus."—if they threw that in there—it actually made the people believe in the claims a lot less.

R: What?

J: Yeah, it actually worked.

R: The thing that we're always complaining about—that, like, one sentence that presents –

S: The token skeptic?

E: The token skeptic, yeah.

R: – the entirety of skeptical opinion—that actually does make a difference?

J: Well, I don't want to – I don't want to say that the token skeptic 30-second B.S. blurb that they cut on most of the TV shows that we see works. The way that he presented it, it seemed a little bit like it had more teeth. It wasn't a quick thing. I think it was a little bit more of a takedown.

S: So, there was a series of studies about ten years ago, where they looked at the same thing—at the presentation of pseudoscience in a documentary and its effect on people's belief in the subject matter, like belief in UFOs or alien visitation—and they found some similar things in that, when it was presented scientifically, that absolutely increased belief. They also found that if, at any point in time, it was said—there was any kind of disclaimer saying—the following claims are true, or that the following claims may or may not be true, or whatever—anything positive or negative—reduced belief, or reduced the increase in belief, following the segment. So, anything that triggered people's questioning about, is it true or is it not true, was actually a good thing. But they found the opposite in that the token skepticism at the end—a scientist coming in at the end and saying, you know, "We've evaluated this, and it's not true", ''increased'' belief in the thing, because it lent legitimacy to the whole enterprise—the very fact that a scientist was spending their time and giving their attention to it.

J: Oh, yeah.

S: So –

B: Is that a cultural change –

S: Well, maybe –

B: – or is it the study?

S: Well, all right. I don't know. I don't know what the answer to that is. But, one possible interpretation may be that the ''token'' ineffective skepticism actually has a negative effect in raising belief in the paranormal because it's lending false legitimacy, but if you give ''effective'', you know, analysis—

B: Yeah.

S: —effective skeptical analysis—maybe you could reverse that and bring it back down.

J: Yeah, from from what the article said, it was, I think, an equal paragraph on the skeptical perspective –

S: Yes.

J: – and, specifically –

S: We really do have to argue for equal time and for getting the skeptical position –

J: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

S: – not the talking head blurb token skepticism may not – may still be counterproductive.

J: And the thing that he said was that there was that the article, the paragraph, did a takedown of the people that were claiming to be scientists.

S: Mm-hmm.

J: So, it stripped their expertise away, in essence.

S: Yeah. Yeah.

J: So, you know, I think it's interesting. I think that we're hard-wired for these things. I find, unfortunately, more and more TV programs—hey, you guys noticing, what's with the reality TV? Like, why is reality TV taking over television? Have you asked yourself that question?

S: 'Cause it's cheap.

E: It's cheap.

S: It's cheap, yeah.

(''applause'')

== Live Q&A (51:06) ==
* Questions from the CSICon audience

{{transcribing
|transcriber = Cornelioid
}}

S: OK, we do have a few minutes for some Q&A. If you want to ask us a question—you can ask us anything. We won't necessarily answer, but you can ask—

Q1: Rebecca, I hate to break this to you, but NOC the beluga died five years ago.

R: God damn it!

J: Aww.

(''groans'')

R: God damn it, Tim Farley!

J: Tim Farley!

Q2: On a more serious note, Jay, apropos of what you said, I'm waiting for the skeptics community to have some reaction to the television show [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Island_Medium ''The Long Island Medium''] –

J: Oh.

S: Yeah.

Q2: – especially when she has kids on the program and she's telling them that, you know, she's talking to their dead parent.

J: Yeah, yeah. It's pathetic.

R: Oh. What a sick line.

S: I haven't brought myself to watch it yet. You know, I know it's out there. At some point, I think we probably should bite the bullet and then do an actual review, but I – the reports that I heard are, as you say, really abusive –

E: Yeah.

S: – very exploitative, not just that it's totally gullible nonsense. It's really exploitative. Yep.

Q3: Love your podcast, listen a lot. Always wondered whose voice says, "And now it's time for Science or Fiction".

J: That's changed over the years. The –

S: The current voice is –

R: It's Izzy.

S: – Izzy. Izzy.

J: Izzy Lawrence, yeah.

R: Izzy Lawrence. She has a podcast called [http://sundayssupplement.blogspot.com/ "Sundays Supplement"]. She's a skeptic and a stand-up comedian in England (''inaudible'').

S: So that's a genuine British accent, unlike some of the previous people who have said this.

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

S: Yes?

Q4: Yeah, with this – the Italian decision about the geologists and the – not predicting the volcano—or the earthquakes—there could – there's, like, a silver lining here. This could be a boon to the insurance industry, because maybe geologists and seismologists need to take out malpractice insurance.

J: Mm-hmm.

R: That's your "silver lining"? The insurance companies? Like, "Well, with all of this, I was really worried about the HMOs, but it looks like I'll be all right."

Q5: All right. Hi, guys! I love the podcast and I love everything you guys do. I'm –

S: Really? Everything we do? You don't know half the stuff that we do.

J: Yeah!

R: You don't want to know.

Q5: Certainly everything I'm aware that you guys do –

S: Oh, OK.

Q5: – and assume you do, which is really (''inaudible'')

S: Good caveat.

J: He hasn't seen [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1X1FOZmmVA "Occ: The Skeptical Caveman"] yet, so –

Q5: Oh, I certainly have!

J: Oh, and you like it?

Q5: Yeah, it's really good stuff!

R: Don't sound so surprised, Jay.

J: Just kidding.

Q5: Anyway. I'm a teaching assistant, and I help teach a lot of science courses—a lot of basic science courses—and we teach the scientific method—and most people understand the scientific method—but there's this other part that never gets explicitly put in there, like, this honesty and integrity built into it, like you need to make sure that the effect that you're trying to explain is really there, and that kind of stuff. Have you guys come up with a really good way to explain that part of science to people?

S: You mean that you just have to be ethical? Or you have to really care about the truth, I guess, is what you're saying?

Q5: Yes.

S: Yeah. I mean, I think—you're right, that is sort of implicit in the scientific process, that, you know, you're trying to find the actual answer, not just work backwards to the answer that you want to have—so, I think that's also implicit in scientific skepticism. I mean, that's part of – you know, one of our core values is, we want to know what's really ''really'' true, not just what ''seems'' to be true, and sometimes you have to dig really, really hard, and you have to be skeptical of your own conclusions. I mean, that ''is'' skepticism, I think, what you're saying. So, I think – combine that with the scientific method and you have scientific skepticism.

J: Yeah, but I think he was asking more about teaching the idea that you – we want to know the truth and be passionate about the truth –

S: Yeah.

J: – and I – it's a hard thing to teach, I think. I think that, you know, we're all kind of freakish in the idea that we're into skepticism. It's – it is something that you could teach your kids, absolutely. But, you know, how do you teach an adult to get into the truth, and get rid of all the garbage that's in their heads? It's hard, as, you know, as people get older, it's hard for them to learn that, I think. But I do agree with you. I think we need to inspire kids to—first off, teach them skepticism. Let's just start with that—I think that the caring will come with that.

== Science or Fiction (55:19) ==

S: Item number one. A new study finds that astronauts who spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. Item number two. Scientists have discovered the first feathered dinosaur in the western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers. And item number three. Researchers find that, at the molecular level, evolutionary changes can be highly predictable.

== Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:08:11) ==
<blockquote>Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.</blockquote>
J: Paul Kurtz!

{{Outro1}}

== References ==
<references/>

{{Navigation}}

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-17T12:02:43Z

Cornelioid: /* Live Q&A (51:06) */ draft

{{Editing required
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{{InfoBox
|episodeTitle = SGU Episode 381
|episodeDate = 3rd November 2012 
|episodeIcon = File:KurtzPic2.jpg 
|previous = 
|next = 
|rebecca = y 
|bob = y 
|jay = y 
|evan = y 
|guest1 = RW: Richard Wiseman
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|downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2012-11-03.mp3
|notesLink = http://www.theskepticsguide.org/archive/podcastinfo.aspx?mid=1&pid=381
|forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,43845.0.html
|qowText = Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality. 
|qowAuthor = [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] 
|}}

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

RW: – a live edition of my favorite podcast and radio show. So, we're going to have Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Jay Novella, Even Bernstein, and – and a woman –

(''laughter'')

RW: – join us. It's the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe!

(''applause'')

S: Hello, and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

(''applause'')

S: Today is Thursday, October 25th, 2012, and we are live from [http://www.csiconference.org/ CSICon 2012].

(''applause'')

Joining me, as always, are Bob Novella –

B: Hey everybody!

(''cheers'')

S: – Rebecca Watson –

R: Hello, everyone!

(''cheers'')

''audience member'': I love you, Rebecca!

R: I love you, too!

S: – Jay Novella...Jay Novella –

J: Wooooo! Rebecca, yeah!

(''cheers'')

R: I love you, Jay!

S: – and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hello, Nashville!

(''cheers'')

S: So, how're you guys doing? How do you like Nashville?

J: It's awesome. I didn't – I thought people were going to literally be playing guitar when I got off the airplane.

B: Oh, come on, Jay.

S: Yeah, in the airport, you know?

J: Yeah.

== This Day in Skepticism (1:28) ==
November 3, 1957 Sputnik 2 launched

S: So, Rebecca, you always start us off with a This Day in Science and Skepticism. This show will be going up on November 3rd, so, did anything happen that day?

R: Nope.

(''laughter'')

B: Ever?

R: Oh, all right. One thing happened. One thing happened! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_2 Sputnik 2] happened.

S: ''Sputnik 2: The Revenge''.

(''laughter'')

R: ''Son of Sputnik''.

S: ''Son of Sputnik''.

J: ''Son of Sputnik''!

R: That's right. Sputnik 2 you might know as "the one that killed the puppy".

(''awwws'')

R: No? Aww, that's weird, 'cause I really thought that this would go over well at a live event! Yeah, Sputnik 2 is the craft that took Laika into orbit, Laika being the Soviet space dog who became the first animal in orbit—for about, like, 10 minutes, before she died.

E: Well, you know –

S: A couple of hours. It was a couple of hours. They thought he was going to survive for about ten days –

R: I think she's a "she".

S: – ''she'' was going to survive –

E: Eh.

R: Get it right, Steve!

S: You know, asexual Russian names, I mean, come on. But, they thought that Laika was going to survive for about ten days, but then they had a little mishap with the cooling system, and –

E: Oops.

S: Yeah. – got a little hot in the capsule—104 degrees, they said in (''inaudible'')

E: That'd be a hot dog. Yep.

(''groans'')

B: Oh, come on. My god.

E: Thank you. I'll be here all the weekend.

R: How – can we just take a moment, just to take a poll of the audience: How are our dead dog jokes doing? Good?

J: Yes!

(''applause'')

R: OK. All right. Yeah.

J: You know what? I didn't know until we researched this item that it was a one-way mission.

R: Yeah.

E: Mm-hmm.

J: That's really nasty.

S: Well, the capsule returned.

(''laughter'')

E: Yeah, well –

S: About 162 days later, it burned up in the atmosphere. But, yeah, they never intended to bring Laika back.

J: No, they actually were going to euthanize her with poison food after the tenth day, I think, right?

R: This is seriously the worst item ever. What was I thinking when I picked it?

S: There – there's Laika.

E: Aww. Aww.

R: Oh yeah! I didn't pick it! Steve forced me to!

E: But, we'd never know who this dog was if it didn't go on Sputnik 2, right? I mean, this would be an otherwise – another animal.

R: No, yeah, and I'm sure Laika appreciates the fame she gets from ''beyond the grave''.

E: She got her fifteen minutes.

== In Memorium ==
=== Paul Kurtz (3:45) ===
* 1925-2012

S: Well, we are going to start the new segment of the show with an ''in memoriam''. We do like to, on the ''Skeptic's Guide'', pause to remember those members of the skeptical community who have passed, and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] died several days ago, just the day before the organizers were coming down to the conference. He died on Sunday. He was 85 years old. It was 1925 to 2012, so that is 86. I can do math. (''audience laughter'') You'll know why i was confused in a moment.

R: 'Cause you're terrible at math?

S: Yes. So, before we get the show started, Ron Lindsay and Kendrick Frazier talked about Paul Kurtz. You know, he was one of the giants of the skeptical movement, of the skeptical community. You know, he was largely responsible for organizing the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, founding Prometheus Books, CFI, [http://www.secularhumanism.org/ Secular Humanism]. He was an academic, a philosopher. He really gave a lot of weight to the movement early on. He made it to that – he broke it to that next level. It wasn't that, you know, before he came on board. So he has to be remembered for that. We did have some interactions with Paul along the years. The first year that we started – (''audience cooing'')

R: Baby Steve!

E: Aww.

S: I was a little younger back then.

R: He's three years old there.

B: He's only half-grey there.

S: (''laughing'') I'm only half-grey!

E: A little less grey, yep.

S: You can mark my age by my greyness up until about ten years ago, when i went totally grey. Right when we got started, in 1996, you know, CSICOP, now CSI, you know, they were the big national skeptical organization. They'd definitely – They took us under their wing, you know, gave us their support, their local membership list, so that we could get our movement going. And i remember meeting Paul at the first World Skeptics Conference, and he was immediately—like, you know, your grandfather—like, you know, very, very comfortably took on that air of being a mentor. It's like, "Yeah, this is great. You're welcome to the skeptical movement." So i definitely remember him fondly in that way. A few years later, Paul organized a meeting of the local skeptical groups. In the picture here you can see me again with Bob, Perry, and Evan. The four of us came up together –

J: Now, if i remember correctly, Rebecca, you and i were off being badass somewhere else, right?

R: I think that's what was happening, yeah.

S: – and, i think, in the foreground, that's Colonel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Nickell Joe Nickell], isn't it?

E: Colonel.

S: Yeah, he had broke his leg in Spain, or something?

R: Round of applause for Colonel Joe Nickell!

E: I remember that.

(''applause'')

S: Joe actually is going to come up, and he's going to read a poem that he wrote, i believe, about Paul.

JN: Paul was a great supporter of the arts, and i hope he would have liked this. The poem is called "Book of Seasons: An elegy". (''Uncertain re: permission to reproduce poem'')

S: Thank you, Joe.

=== Leon Jaroff (7:34) ===
* 1926-2012

S: This same weekend, Saturday before the show, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_(magazine) Leon Jaroff] also died. ''He'' was 85, hence my confusion. So, Leon Jariff—not a big name in the skeptical community recently, and if you ask, you know, people at conventions like this if they knew who he was – I mean, in fact, right before the show Rebecca said to me, "Who's Leon Jaroff?"

R: (''indignant gasp'')

S: Sorry, Rebecca.

(''audience laughter'')

S: But he was perhaps one of the most skeptical journalists that we have had.

B: Yeah.

S: He was the science columnist for ''Time Magazine''. It was he who said, "You know, popularizing science is important, you know, we should start a science-dedicated magazine." And that was ''Discover Magazine''. That was him. He was not afraid to be a hard-nosed skeptic when writing about scientific issues. So, for example, when writing about chiropractors, [http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,213482,00.html he wrote],

<blockquote>
Chiropractors also employ a bewildering variety of weird practices to diagnose their patients. Some use applied kinesiology, a muscle test that supposedly can diagnose allergies and diseased organs. Hair analysis and iris readings are commonplace in the profession. Even sillier are many of the treatments that chiropractors use and recommend: homeopathic potions, colon irrigation, magnetic therapy, enzyme pills, colored-light therapy, and something called "balancing body energy," among other mystical procedures with undocumented effects.
</blockquote>

S: That's from a mainstream journalist writing in ''Time Magazine''. Do we see this kind of thing today? I don't think so.

B: Nope.

(''audience applause'')

S: So, you know, we do have to, I think, also note the support that Jaroff gave to such a good science journalism, and that kind of hard-nosed, skeptical science journalism is definitely something we miss. That's a void that, I think, that we in the skeptical community have to fill, but, unfortunately, it is a void.

== News Items ==
=== Big Bang Conference at CERN (9:31)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19870036 Big Bang and religion mixed in Cern debate]

S: Rebecca –

R: Yes!

S: – this is a different quote. It's not as good a quote.

<blockquote>
Science in isolation is great for producing stuff, but not so good for producing ideas.
</blockquote>

R: Mm-hmm.

S: Who said that?

R: That was said by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Pinsent Andrew Pinsent] at the Ramsey Center for Science and Religion. What I particularly liked about this quote is that it is completely reversed – it is the exact opposite of what I would have suggested.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I would say that science is actually really good at ideas, but, in order to produce stuff, you have to add something else. You know, like, they might be able to figure out lasers, but to make a CD player you need a marketing executive.

S: Or death ray.

R: Thank you. Yeah, of course. Why didn't I go there first?

(''laughter'')

R: Yeah, so, this quote comes from a recent article that the BBC produced: "Big Bang and religion mixed in CERN debates". Apparently, there was a conference recently that CERN held—you remember CERN, you know, the guys who, apparently, may have found –

J: Higgs!

R: – the Higgs boson.

S: A boson with Higgs-like properties.

R: A Higgs-like thing.

S: Boson, yeah.

R: A Higgish. I like "Higgish" –

B: "Higgish"?

R: – a little bit.

J: (''laughing'') "A little bit!"

S: "Higgy"?

B: (''singing, inaudible'') ''Higgy again."

R: So, yes. Apparently, I don't know the purpose – I don't know what, who dreamt this up, but what I'm thinking is that someone was concerned that they may have found a particle that many people know as the "God particle", and, so, they're concerned that they're going to be excommunicated or, you know, that people will rebel—religious people will rebel—against science. Basically, we'll have some sort of Dark Ages–esque thing happening, and, so, maybe somebody at CERN thought, "Well, we should have this conference where we talk about how religious people should be OK with the Higgs boson."

B: Mm-hmm.

R: So, those are the good intentions that I'm assuming are behind this conference that has speakers such as this. The quotes in here are pretty fun, and none of them have any amount of intelligence to them. Steve, you're the one who brought this one to my attention here –

S: Yes.

R: I'm interested in what – we've talked a little bit before about things like the Templeton Foundation, which is an organization that gives out a prize – gives out prizes to people who can explore science in a religious context, basically. And I'm a bit opposed to it. I feel like it's muddying the waters. I think we don't ''need'' to bring religion into what people are doing at CERN.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I think those two things are happily separated, but I'm interested in knowing your feelings on this.

S: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think trying to introduce theology into science is misguided. You know, this conference was specifically about the origin of the universe. So, it's not just about scientific issues in particular. I think the thinking, at least on the part of the theologians who were quoted about this conference, is that, well, you're talking about the origin of the universe. That's a really big question, and religion is about answering the really big questions—not science. Science is narrow and reductionist, and makes stuff, but can't really grapple with the big questions of our origins. And that's exactly incorrect, as you were saying. That's a complete knock to science. I mean, science is, in fact, the only human intellectual endeavor that ''can'' answer any empirical question about the origin of the universe.

R: Yeah.

J: So, was the conference, though, the scientists trying to appease religious people? The saying that –

R: Well, you know, apparently, this was – the conference was done on the part of CERN, according to BBC, and that's what I find troubling. I'm totally OK with a conference that religious people host, you know, and the topic might be "How do we –" you know, "How do we consider our theology now that we know ''X'', ''Y'', and ''Z''—now that science has discovered this? What does that mean for ''our'' belief system?" And I think that's fine, but, you know, apparently, the theologians who were there seem to think that this was a chance to ''debate'' the scientists –

J: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

R: – and, no! Why would you do that? Debate is completely the opposite direction of where you want to go.

S: It also – I mean, the quotes seem to me like a desperate grasp at relevance, trying to make it seem like they're – you know, that theology is still relevant to questions about origins of the universe, when, in fact, science has completely displaced it from that endeavor.

J: So, did it end up with, like, a fistfight? Like, what happened?

(''laughter'')

E: Science won.

R: I haven't found any evidence of any arrests, so, apparently –

S: There were no fisticuffs?

J: That really must've been awkward as hell, though, right? Like, they're like, sitting there, like, after a whole day, and they're like, "Uh, OK, it's over now."

E: Something tells me they're not going to be doing this again. They're going to learn from this.

S: I don't know.

R: Well, I mean, it's actually not even – like, I wish it had been that exciting. But, instead, it just seems like it was really ''boring'' –

E: Yeah.

R: – and nobody came to ''any'' conclusions. Because you ''can't'', you know?

S: Yeah.

R: You're just having a discussion of, like, well, you know, "But what don't we know?"

=== Italian Earthquake Scientists Convicted (14:57)===
* [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/22/us-italy-earthquake-court-idUSBRE89L13V20121022 Italian scientists convicted over earthquake warning]

S: Now, we're trying to keep – we like to keep our live shows really light –

(''laughter'')

E: So far, so good.

S: So, we thought we'd talk about a horrible earthquake that killed over three hundred people.

E: Yeah, let's go there.

R: Good intro. Good intro there.

S: But there's actually a better story embedded in that. There were six Italian scientists, who were recently convicted of manslaughter –

B: Yeah.

S: – for failure to properly communicate the warnings about the upcoming L'Aquila earthquake in 2009. Yeah, we've been following this story, you know, since it happened. The quick version is that there were a number of small tremors in this very earthquake-prone part of Italy, and the geologists—the local geologists—you know, were following it. And their opinion was that, well, these tremors are very common. Most such tremors are not followed by major quakes. Most major quakes are not preceded by these kinds of tremors. So, the probability of a major quake occurring is not particularly higher, you know, now, just because of these tremors, than at any time, and, therefore, there's no cause for alarm. Now, they were specifically asked during a press conference, "Should we panic?" You know, "Should we evacuate?" And they said "No. There's no reason to evacuate. Stay at home and drink a glass of wine."

B: Steve, was this about a year ago that we covered this?

S: 2009. 2009 –

B: Oh, wow. (''inaudible'')

S: – so, was the quake, and then the court trial started about a year ago, and now the decision came down that the six scientists were convicted to six years – I think six years in prison and something like, you know, millions of dollars in damages for manslaughter—for the deaths of the people who didn't evacuate because they – of their reassurances that there was nothing to be worried about.

R: That's horrific.

J: Well, i, you know, to play devil's advocate real quick, if there was true negligence—like, if they didn't follow through with things that they needed to do, if they did a terrible job at analyzing the data, in a fashion that – where the data could have been analyzed better, or they actually weren't asking their peers for the information—i can understand if there was extreme negligence.

S: Right.

J: But, even still, like, that's very hard to prove, and I just don't understand –

S: Well, I mean, not really. The question is, was their opinion within the standard for their profession? That's—in my opinion—that's the only real question here. You can't be blamed for being wrong, right? You can't be blamed for a bad outcome if you were following the standard. Now, of course, scientists can't predict earthquakes. You can't predict when an earthquake is going to occur. That's the bottom line. What – every statement they said was truthful, you know, every factual statement. "These tremors do not necessarily mean that there's an earthquake coming, and they are not a reason to evacuate. We don't evacuate every city where there's tremors because there might be a major quake, because it's not that predictive." So, that was not negligent. No, and they weren't really being accused of negligence. They were basically being accused of poorly communicating to the public. It seems to be based on a lot of false premises about what scientists ''can know''—what an expert about, you know, an earthquake, a geologist, expert ''can know''.

R: Yeah, they've been convicted for not using a magical power they don't have.

S: Yeah.

R: They might as well have convicted all the psychics in Italy for not accurately predicting this earthquake.

J: I think we need to be careful—i don't disagree, of course. I don't think that these men should be going to jail for this at all—but it is an important thing to state that, I think, people should go to prison, or get in trouble ''legally'', if they are misrepresenting science or – right? So you see where I'm going with this.

S: Well, yeah. If you are –

J: If you're setting that premise—you're saying, "Hey, these guys screwed up, they didn't do what they were supposed to do, they didn't communicate to us the real possible outcomes here", whatever—and, like –

S: Yeah.

J: – I'll reiterate, I don't think that they should be going to jail—

B: Well, I don't agree –

J: —but, I do think, though, that that standard that that court set needs to be applied all the way down the ladder.

B: Yeah, but, Jay, like, someone saying that "I have a cure for cancer and it's scientifically proven" but it's a sham?

J: Exactly, right? So, if they're going to actually take those scientists out and say "You're done. You're not performing science anymore and you're going to jail for that bad decision or information you gave", well, hello! Then, you know, all of a sudden, a million lawsuits need to be filed.

S: But, it wasn't – to clarify, though, it wasn't ''bad'', it was just ''unlucky''. I mean, doctors encounter this all the time, you know. You are asked to decide, you know, what tests to order, what diagnoses a patient might have. There's a whole lot of liability involved with that. You can't be convicted of malpractice just because of a bad outcome if what you did was within the standard of care.

B: Right.

S: So, was the information they were giving to the public within the standard for the profession? If the answer is "yes", the fact that there was a low-probability earthquake the next week is not their fault.

E: Right.

S: It doesn't change the fact – you know, if they're saying there's a 99% chance that there's not going to be an earthquake, and then the 1% thing happens, they were still right –

J: Yeah.

S: – in saying that it was unlikely.

R: Yeah.

E: Didn't the evidence show, basically, that they performed correctly, essentially? They did not –

S: That's the consensus. I mean, so, there's worldwide outrage, especially among the scientific community (''inaudible'') –

B: This has got to be shot down in a higher court.

S: Yeah.

B: This can't – can't possibly stand.

E: I hope so.

S: Well, there's two appeals left. There's two appeals, and they will stay out of prison before those appeals. So, the United States National Academy of Science, the Royal Academy of Science—the Royal Society, rather—issued a joint statement saying that "that is why we must protest the verdict in Italy. If it becomes a precedent in law, it could lead to a situation in which scientists will be afraid to give expert opinion."

J: Yeah, that's devastating.

E: Mm-hmm.

S: So, it would have a chilling effect. What – you know, what geologist is going to, you know, talk to the public in Italy now, if you could wind up in jail and, you know, financially devastated, and your career devastated, because you can't predict the future, you know, because you don't have a crystal ball? It's insane. It's insane.

J: Yeah. To think that they're going after these scientists, and they're not going after the rampant quackery throughout –

S: Well, there's that, too.

E: I wonder how much pressure they came under from, like, the families, the survivors, of this terrible, terrible devastation –

J: Oh yeah, they had to hang someone.

E: – and I imagine they put a lot of pressure on politicians and other people in order to hold ''somebody'' accountable.

J: They have to. They had to send someone down the river for that.

B: Did they have a trial?

S: Yeah.

B: Did they have witnesses and experts coming in?

S: Yeah. Yep.

B: I'd love to know the details of what exactly happened, because how could –

(''laughter'')

S: So, we'll see if the worldwide backlash has an effect. I mean, again, they do have two appeals left, so we'll definitely follow it.

=== Whale Makes Human Sounds (21:35)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20026938 Beluga whale 'makes human-like sounds']

S: All right, Rebecca, so, we have a cute animal –

R: Thank you.

S: – we're going to talk about now.

J: This is a happy one!

R: Just tell me this narwhal or whatever is alive.

S: It's a whale.

E: It's alive and well.

S: It's a beluga whale.

B: It sort of looks like a narwhal.

R: Tell me this beluga is alive!

E: That's NOC the beluga. They're very much alive.

R: It's not a beluga?

E: "NOC". N-O-C.

S: "NOC". NOC the beluga.

R: Oh! "That's NOC."

(''laughter'')

R: I was about to say, "No, ''that is a beluga''."

S: Sounds like a children's song.

E: It does sound like a children's –

S: Evan, sing it.

E: No.

S: OK.

J: Don't change it! Please don't –

E: If my daughter was here, maybe. But, no. So, what's important about NOC the beluga? Well, OK, so, picture this: You are part of the National Marine Mammal Foundation, OK, and you're in the tank, swimming around with the whales and stuff, and, all of a sudden, you hear somebody—you hear a voice—call your name. Something to the effect that – "Get out of the water! Get out of the water!" So, you're in the tank and you come up and you say, "OK, who told me to get out of the water? Who told me to get out of the water?" And the other scientists and people are looking around you like, "Nobody? What the heck are you talking about?" And, he's like, "Well, I definitely ''heard'' that!" Well, what did he actually hear? Well, apparently, NOC the beluga made some noises very reminiscent of human noises. Beluga whales are, you know, incredible creatures. Their calls – They're known as the canaries of the sea. They have a very high-frequency, high-pitched tone to their noises that they make, but they make lots of different kinds of noises. They can emit up to eleven different kinds of sounds—crackles, whistles, trills, squawks—all sorts of things. But, it's been rumored that these whales can emit noises that sound like humans talking. And, for the first time, they've actually recorded NOC the whale making these noises, and they have it on tape. And we have it on tape.

R: Nah.

(''NOC makes unnervingly human-sounding noises'')

R: Did he maybe just swallow a kazoo?

(''laughter'')

J: Everybody has a drunk neighbor that makes those noises.

(''laughter'')

E: Oh, gosh. Who knows what the heck he was saying? You know, dolphins have been taught to mimic noises that kind of sound like human voices, but, before this, there's been no record of an animal ''spontaneously'' coming up and making these kinds of noises. This is the first evidence, the first hard evidence we have of it.

R: Here's – I have a theory. I have a theory. I have a theory that – so, whales, in general, are incredibly intelligent –

E: Oh yeah.

R: – possibly as smart as us, but they don't want thumbs, or any way to talk to us –

E: Or fire.

R: – and I feel like they do, basically – That's true. No, I saw Spongebob once. There was fire under the sea. I think it can be done.

S: Yep, but they don't have nanotechnology, though.

R: They don't. So, my theory is that whales are basically, like – they have – it's like they have locked-in syndrome, you know? Where they're just –

J: Oh, no.

R: – super-intelligent, and there's all these people around them, and they're just messing with them –

J: So, he was screaming, actually –

R: Yeah! And, so, he's been like, his whole life, he's been in this stupid little – like, he's in captivity, right? So, he's been in this stupid little aquarium, and he's just, like, "I hate all of you! And I'm going to will myself to tell you, because you're too stupid to understand!"

E: So, basically, what's going on here is, the whale has learned to change – rapidly change pressure within its naval cavity in order to create these sounds. And, it hasn't – the whale is able to over-inflate what's known as its vestibular sac in its blowhole, which is normally acts to stop water from basically coming in. So, the whale is going through a lot of, you know, effort, essentially, to try to make these noises. And I'm sure they're going to be trying to figure out exactly, you know, basically, ''why'' is the whale doing this?

S: Well, he just – this whale was – did spend his life in captivity –

E: Yeah.

S: – so, he did hear human speech a lot, and maybe he's just, to some extent, mimicking the sounds that he grew up hearing his whole life.

J: It's definitely – it definitely has a human sound to it, in the cadence and everything.

S: Yeah.

J: I mean, he's intelligent enough to mimic a human, which is really cool.

R: Yeah.

J: And, then, you always think, you know, if he can mimic a human—if his brain is advanced that much—you know, maybe he –

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But, is he mimicking humans or making fun of humans? You know, like people make fun of other languages?

R: Yeah, he's just like "Weh! Weh! Weh! This is what you sound like!"

E: Yeah. You stupid bald monkey and (''inaudible'')! Get out of here!

B: Sounds like a false dichotomy.

=== PANDAS Controversy (26:18)===
* [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/a-pandas-story/ A PANDAS Story]

S: So, we're going to talk about – going from talking about beluga whales to talking about PANDAS! Except, we're not talking about pandas, because we're talking about –

E: Wait.

R: Stop toying with my emotions, Steve!

S: I had to put a cute picture of a panda up there for you, Rebecca. We are talking about pediatric autoimmune –

R: It makes sense.

S: – neuropsychiatric disorder associated with –

E: I didn't know PANDA was an acronym. Cool!

R: Steve, I miss the panda.

S: – streptococcal infection—or, PANDAS. See? There's a panda.

(''laughter, cooing'')

E: Aww!

R: Yay.

S: We're talking about PANDAS –

E: Aww.

R: Boo.

J: Oh.

E: That's worse.

S: – which is a legitimately controversial medical diagnosis! So, essentially, what happens is, children suddenly develop ticks—like Tourette syndrome—and psychiatric disorders—obsessive–compulsive disorder—and it is thought that, in some cases, that it is actually – the inciting event is an infection—bacteria—streptococcal infection. Now, of course, it's always difficult to establish the reality of a new disease. Unless you get all your ducks in a row, and all the, you know, pathology all adds up, it's sometimes difficult to identify a legitimate new syndrome and to prove that – cause and effect. So, correlation is one thing. As we know, correlation is not ''necessarily'' causation. And, so, the syndrome exists. There are – the number of physicians who have identified the sudden onset psychiatric – neuropsychiatric disorder, and in some cases it is temporally associated with a streptococcal infection. But that's not the same thing as saying that the strep infection ''caused'' the neuropsychiatric syndrome. So, that's – and there's the controversy. Now, of course, we live in the modern Internet age. So, as soon as a scientist says, "I think that there's this syndrome—I want to call it PANDAS—and – sort of, you know, a psychiatric syndrome provoked by a bacterial infection", of course, there are now support groups, and there's groups on the Internet, and there's patient groups supporting this diagnosis before the science is even settled. And, then, of course, once that happens, when you try to do more science, or have any kind of discussion about whether or not this is a real syndrome, you have parents and patient groups and advocacy groups, you know, calling you all kinds of nasty names and saying there's a conspiracy against people with PANDAS, it's all the insurance companies and Big Pharma and evil doctors or whatever. So, that's the situation that we're in the middle of right now, unfortunately, is that, before the science is settled, you know, there's the scientific controversy, then there's the public controversy. This came to the media attention recently because of a 16-year-old girl called Elizabeth Wray. She developed, you know, a syndrome like PANDAS with ticks and psychological disorders, was diagnosed by a physician with PANDAS, and then was transferred to Boston's Children's Hospital for – presumably for further treatment of PANDAS. Now, the story that is going around the PANDAS community is that once she got to Boston University—or Boston Children's Hospital—she was told – the parents were told, "We don't believe that PANDAS is real – that it exists", and then they essentially admitted their daughter to the psychiatric unit and started treating her with psychiatric medications. Now, I don't know if that's true, because the doctors and the hospital are not telling their side of the story because of patient confidentiality. So, we don't know what their side of the story is. We only know the parents' side of the story, filtered through the PANDAS community. Unfortunately, now there's – this story has taken on a life of its own. There's a Free Elizabeth Wray movement going on within the PANDAS community, they're telling all kinds of horror stories about Boston Children's Hospital, and, you know, we can't verify any of it. What's interesting in reading about it is that each side has their narrative—and I wrote about this on Science-Based Medicine—because one of the things that – the ideas that we're wrestling with in the skeptical community is that—well, all right, we have, I think, a good approach to critical thinking, we understand a lot about self-deception, about the nature of science and pseudoscience—but we don't always have a good story to tell the public, or we have a hard time convincing mainstream outlets that we have – that our story is an interesting and good one. You know, we have to really market our narrative—the skeptical narrative. When you read about stories like this, the PANDAS proponents have a really compelling emotional narrative. It may be total B.S.—i don't know—but it's very compelling. They have a story of a child suffering from an unusual disease, parents who just want to do what's right for her—I believe all those things are correct—and then they are, essentially, being abused by a dismissive and skeptical medical establishment who doesn't believe in this disease, and that is treating their child with perhaps harmful, you know, psychiatric medications. They even – this went to court. Apparently, the hospital thought that the parents were being negligent in not allowing them to give proper standard of care—psychiatric treatment—to their child, and they wanted to have custody taken away from the parents, and they wanted to admit Elizabeth to a locked psychiatric ward—again, not sure – I can't verify those from the hospital's side of things. A judge – a Massachusetts judge essentially made her a ward of the state while they sorted out what was going on, but they did not grant the hospital their request to treat her in the way that they wanted to. So, they essentially just – the state took her out of everybody's hands for a moment – for the moment. So, it's interesting. Of course, the PANDAS community, again, is up in arms, you know. The court essentially took custody away from these parents that are only trying to do what's right for their daughter. But, of course, you could see the other narrative—you know, let's assume that the physicians think that—even if you think – whether or not you think PANDAS really exists—they think that she has a psychiatric illness, the parents are in denial, they're pursuing this false diagnosis, and they're, you know, refusing standard medical care. That's a story, too.

B: What if you just pulled out the whole strep association, and just treat it like a "pandisorder"? Is their beef that it's associated with strep, and they don't think there's any association? Why don't they just treat it like a neuropsychiatric disorder –

S: Yeah.

B: – and forget about the whole strep association?

S: Well, because the strep association would lead you to treat with things like antibiotics. So, that's the question: Should you treat it with antibiotics, or should you treat her like a psychiatric (''inaudible'') patient?

J: Why not both? I mean, why wouldn't you –

S: Well, she has had at least one round of antibiotics. You can also treat it like an autoimmune disease, with, like, intravenous globulin, for example. So, I mean, these are real medical questions. Do we treat it like an infection, do we treat it like a post-infectious auto-immune disease, or do we treat it like a psychiatric disorder? Those are real questions.

J: Steve, are you saying pandas don't exist? Let me just get this straight.

(''laughter'')

S: So, well, I did – to give a serious answer to your sarcastic question, I did –

R: My favorite kind.

S: – take the opportunity – I'm good that way. I'm good that way. I did take the opportunity just to familiarize myself with the PANDAS literature—again, I always emphasize, I'm no an expert in this, but I can read the literature and give my opinion like a science journalist—i think it's genuinely controversial. When I read the research, there's lots of – the ducks are not in a row. So, when you do things like treat kids who apparently have PANDAS with antibiotics in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, they don't necessarily improve. And, if you look for the antibodies that are supposed to be there, they don't necessarily correlate with the disease onset or with the existence of strep. So –

B: So, this is clearly not like autism and vaccines. It's just more complicated than that.

S: So, no. So, right. So, autism and vaccines, like, I would say, that's been studied enough to say that autism's – that autism is not caused by vaccines. We can say that. We can make the negative statement. I cannot make the negative statement that PANDAS does not exist, only that the research so far has not reached the threshold where we can agree that it does exist and that there is some actual negative data—there's some positive data, too—so it's legitimately controversial. It did remind me, though, of the chronic Lyme disease controversy—

R: Yeah.

S: —which is very common in New England—again, where they think that a number of symptoms, including neurological symptoms, can be caused by a bacterial infection and treated with antibiotics. And the same – there's a lot of overlap in those two communities, you know.

J: Steve, are you saying that the public has unrealistic expectations?

S: Well, I think – it's partly that. I mean, I think the public is uncomfortable with the uncertainty, and they like this sort of hero–villain narrative, so they paint the medical community as the villains, and—except for those maverick physicians who understand. They're Lyme-literate, or they understand PANDAS, so they're the heroes—and, then, the insurance companies don't want to pay for, you know, over-and-over recurrent courses of IV antibiotics, so they're the villains, you know. They're not—I'm not defending insurance companies, but sometimes they actually – sometimes they're right. They don't want to pay for things that are not science-based or evidence-based. So, it's complicated. And, you know, how do we – so, how do we deal with a child with this disorder when we don't know what the best scientific answer is—we don't know if it's autoimmune, infectious, or psychiatric? We just have to, you know, do the best we can—and there may be different physicians who would take different approaches—but to portray it as "PANDAS definitely exists. If you don't believe in it, you're dismissive and you're mean and evil, or you're protecting some kind of Big Pharma grant that you're getting"—they always bring that up—rather than saying, "You know, we really want to know the right answer, but we just haven't found it yet. It's still – it's legitimately controversial."

J: Yeah, I think what you're saying does confirm what I was thinking, is that the public wants an answer, science is not yet done figuring this one out, and –

S: Yeah. Like the earthquake one, right?

J: Yeah.

S: Sometimes the answer is, "We don't know yet", you know. "We need to do more research". In medicine, we have to make decisions with imperfect, you know, information, so, you know.

J: Wouldn't it be typical, too – like, let's say that this is happening over and over again –

S: Yeah.

J: – like, at some point, some doctors are going to come up with different ideas, they're going to try it out, you know. The trial-and-error process happens, and—i hate to say it, but—this girl is probably going to be one of the people that gets tested on with new ideas.

S: Well, I mean – well, if you're really testing then you should be doing a research protocol. If you're just applying the best knowledge that we have to an individual patient, that's – a certain amount of trial and error with that that's not really experimentation. So, there is a difference there. So, I don't know. The other interesting question that I'm kind of alluding to is, what role do the patient or the advocacy groups play? I think, a lot of times, that they are helpful in raising awareness for a disease or a disorder and raising funding, and advocating for patients. You know, I've seen, I think, there's a lot of very effective, very good patient advocacy groups out there. But, sometimes, they put their nickel down on a specific scientific answer, and that's not their job.

J: Yeah.

S: It's not their job to predict or demand that science give them the answer they want. And, you know, unfortunately, some people want the answer to be "an infection"—not "genes", not, you know, "We don't know".

J: Yeah. It's curable. That's the one they want.

S: Of course, who – that's the answer I would want to have! "It's something outside that is, you know, foreign, that can be cured, and that can reverse my child to the way that they were". Who – every parent wants that to be the answer, but sometimes you – you know, you have to step back from what you want and listen to the evidence. That's the – that's the scientist's, that's the physician's job, you know. You should just let them do their job, you know.

J: All right, so, I want to bring up a quick side point on this.

S: Yeah.

J: So, as an example, let's say, fifty years ago, let's say this was happening. What stance do you think the public would have differently than what we're seeing today?

S: It's the same, and this ''did'' happen fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, you know, she would be diagnosed with neurosyphilis—maybe not somebody who was sixteen, but that was the stand-in for what we now would, you know, the same subculture would diagnose with chronic Lyme. There were believers in that. There were physicians who believed in treatments like chelation therapy, you know, and science proved it wrong, and they said, "Well, we don't care, we're going to still do it. We're going to come up with – We're just going to keep coming up with special pleading and alternate theories, and form our own societies and our own – and just keep doing it, and say that it's all a conspiracy."

J: Mm-hmm.

S: So, but, I think that it's just the turnaround time is so much faster because of the Internet. Like, another example: CCSVI, right? The alleged blockage in the veins that drained blood from the brain, causing multiple sclerosis. It's that – that whole process—of Dr. Zamboni proposing this entity and a treatment, to it being researched, to it being refuted, to, you know, patient advocacy groups springing up and calling for conspiracies and calling for research and demanding that science give them the answer that they want—all has taken place within a few years. We've seen that cycle happen right before our eyes. So, the Internet is just making it happen a lot quicker and a lot bigger, I think. But it's always been this way.

J: So do you have any ideas on what we could do? Could the skeptical community do anything to help this (''inaudible'')?

S: Well, I think what we do is, we discuss the issue from a science, logical, critical thinking point of view, you know. We point out the role of science in this, and we, I think, we try to bring the public discourse to a level that can deal with it in a more productive way, rather than the conspiracy mongering, sort of lowest-common-denominator that it would otherwise sink to.

J: Yeah.

=== Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44)===
* pnd

S: Well, let's move on. Jay, we're talking about how the media presents stories about paranormal activities.

J: Yeah, this is interesting. So, a professor decided to—Professor Brewer decided that—because what we're seeing over the years is a very obvious interest, in the general public, to news articles, and to TV shows, that talk about ghosts—and, you know, we've all seen the ''Ghost Hunter'' TV show—and, to people like us, at best, we watch it, and it's fun, right? 'Cause it's ridiculous and entertaining, and we like to see people from our perspective—a skeptical perspective—they're acting foolishly. But, there are a lot of people that are watching this, and they're riveted. Like, they really love it and they think a lot of it's real—and, I'm sure, to a certain degree, I can't say everyone that watches it and thinks everything about it is real—but, in the end, there's a huge entertainment factor there, and, unfortunately, to us skeptics, we feel like there's a lot of people that simply believe it, and that's their favorite entertainment. And I know a lot of people—I'm friends with a lot of people—that literally have active discussions on Facebook all the time, that I dip into, that are talking about the latest TAPS show. It would be be, "Can you believe it?" and "I knew that place was haunted!", and they're like, you know, getting whooped up.

S: I don't get it. I just don't get it. Nothing happens!

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

R: That's not true! That's not true.

E: Like "Seinfeld", yeah.

S: But, I mean, but they never find a ghost.

R: Steve, Steve. Did you feel that?

(''laughter'')

R: That happens! That happens all the time.

(''applause'')

R: They feel so much.

J: The thing is, you know –

S: I want to see a [http://www.hark.com/clips/pnzwffccqk-10-people-witnessed-a-free-floating-full-torso-vaporous-apparition full, floating torso] drift across the camera lens. Then I'll be impressed.

B: I still won't believe it. (''inaudible'')

S: No, but at least it'll be entertaining.

J: A lot of the shows, though, they're all right on the cusp, you know, of the noise, right? They're always right on that cusp. They're always ''just'' seeing something, or something falls over, you know? Or there's a noise from upstairs, or whatever, and it's never – they never give you that, you know? You don't get that –

R: This, actually – this came up—tomorrow I'll be talking about the [http://paranormalroadtrip.org/ paranormal road trip] that I just went on with [http://www.jonronson.com/ Jon Ronson] and [http://richardwiseman.wordpress.com/ Richard Wiseman] that got us here—and, at one of the stops, we were at a – we did talk to someone in a "haunted museum", and she was telling us that "the ghost hunters were there, and it was very exciting because there was a noise in the attic, and there were steps (''step sounds'') even though nobody was up there, and so the ghost hunter ran over and climbed up the ladder and looked into the attic, and, just then, a lady, dressed all in white, came ''flying at him'', and he shrieked in horror and fell down the ladder, and it was all really dramatic", and we were just completely blown away, obviously. We were riveted –

E: Yeah, well.

R: – and we said, "We cannot ''wait'' to see that footage!"

(''groans'')

R: – and she said, "Actually, I mean, it was so good, they didn't actually get that on camera.

B: Darn it!

R: No, all the cameras were down in another room somewhere."

J: Yeah, of course.

E: Well.

S: That was like –

R: "There's literally no evidence of it", though. Yeah.

S: – Ed Warren. We were investigating Ed Warren. He told us this story of being in a haunted house, and they had a local news crew over there, and, like, for two hours, they videotaped things flying around the room, you know, like, I say, really impressive, you know, smoking-gun evidence of paranormal activity. We're like, "Great! Can we see that footage?"

E: Sure!

J: "Yeah!"

S: "You know what? They taped over it for the news segment later that night."

(''laughter'')

S: Go figure. Stupid news crew.

J: So, I – I'm going to ask a couple of questions that I want you guys to not answer right now, but just think about it, 'cause these are pretty obvious questions, but I think they're interesting. "Why do people believe, or like to believe, in the paranormal? What's the attraction?" It's an interesting question if you think about it. There are people that ''really'' seek it out and love it. And there's something exciting about it. There's something kind of visceral about it. To my mind—to a skeptical mind—I don't have a connection to it. I just don't see what that allure is, other than, maybe—because I do like horror movies, and I do like to get scared. I love being actually scared sitting in a movie theater. It doesn't happen that often, but when it does happen it's very thrilling—and, maybe they're just having a lot of those thrilling moments. It's easier for them to get scared.

R: But, also, I mean, don't you think, maybe, it's got something to do with the fact that, maybe, we're not going to rot in the ground and die and never see our loved ones again...? Maybe?

J: Maybe? It's – you know, I'm not going to say no, but when I think about it, there's something thrilling about it. I'm not thinking, as I'm being thrilled in a horror movie, "Oh, I'm defying death by being thrilled right now!" That's not happening. I'm just – there is something – it's like, you know, eating something really spicy that hurts.

S: Yeah, but to –

J: It hurts, but it's good at the same time, right?

E: Uh.

S: To a lot of people, definitely, you know, evidence of ghosts is evidence of the afterlife. That's the appeal.

R: Yeah, and when we talk to people who describe their own experiences often—they're talking about Grandma and Grandpa and whatnot coming back to them and telling them that it's all OK—you know, and they're very comforting messages –

E: Yeah, which is why –

S: They want a narrative.

E: Which is why they watch these shows. It reinforces these positions that these people have, you know, and they derive a certain, you know, need out of it.

J: I wonder, though, because those shows are ''so bad''! They're so bad. Can they really be, you know?

R: I mean, there's a lot of – No, no, no! Personally, I would derive a lot of happiness from knowing that my dearly beloved grandmother, who I adored when I was young—she died when I was young—I would get so much happiness knowing that she was just screwing around with asshole ghosthunters on TV. Just, like, brushing past them and then disappearing whenever the cameras come out you know? That would give me a lot of satisfaction, knowing that.

J: Well, maybe the skeptical version of it is watching a YouTube video of Hitchens just tearing some moron apart, right? That's our version of that?

E: That releases endorphins, yeah.

J: 'Cause that makes me believe in something, right?

E: Yeah.

J: It gives me a thrill, but – OK, anyways. So, there is an article we're talking about here. So, Dr. Paul Brewer, who is – teaches at the University of Deleware, developed a study that was recently published in the journal ''Science: Communication'' that examines the influence of the media on the public's perception of the paranormal. So, here is his test: He took four news articles that were similar to each other, but they had significant differences in some of the details. The essence of it was, he had an article on one end of the spectrum that described a paranormal effect with a paranormal investigator, and they were using instruments to measure things, or whatever. And, then, as you go down to the fourth article, the fourth article gets very descriptive about using, you know, faux scientific language to make the paranormal investigators sound scientifically-minded, and using scientific tools. And, what he found was, the more of the faux science that was in the article, the more that the people believed that the paranormal accounts were true. You know, it's kind of a kick in the gut for us skeptics, because—and for us scientists, because—they're using our lingo, and our vernacular, and the way that we go about presenting data, and they're fooling people with it—because, I think, the general public is trained to a certain degree to recognize scientific language and recognize the formality of science—and they're using that—and I don't know how deliberate it is. Maybe they figured it out for the TV shows, that, you know, "hey, the more we B.S. this, the more we make this meter look cool and we throw in, you know, technical jargon, the more people that are going to be interested in our TV show"—

B: I think they also believe it themselves, Jay. They think they're being scientific.

J: Yeah.

E: That's right, yeah.

B: That's a big part of it as well.

E: You bet they do.

J: So, Brewer said it wasn't just any story about paranormal investigators that made people believe in ghosts and haunted houses. It was a story about how they were scientific. So, he puts a big emphasis on the science there. And, the good news was that he said that they might look at this and say, "Well, all it takes is this sprinkle of some acronyms in there, and wave around a cool-looking thing that beeps, and suddenly people believe in ghosts and haunted houses." Now, the one cool thing about his research was, he also found that if, at the end of the article, there was a skeptical disclaimer that said "This is the skeptical perspective. This is why that investigation was wrong. This is the mistakes that they made and this is why these instruments are bogus."—if they threw that in there—it actually made the people believe in the claims a lot less.

R: What?

J: Yeah, it actually worked.

R: The thing that we're always complaining about—that, like, one sentence that presents –

S: The token skeptic?

E: The token skeptic, yeah.

R: – the entirety of skeptical opinion—that actually does make a difference?

J: Well, I don't want to – I don't want to say that the token skeptic 30-second B.S. blurb that they cut on most of the TV shows that we see works. The way that he presented it, it seemed a little bit like it had more teeth. It wasn't a quick thing. I think it was a little bit more of a takedown.

S: So, there was a series of studies about ten years ago, where they looked at the same thing—at the presentation of pseudoscience in a documentary and its effect on people's belief in the subject matter, like belief in UFOs or alien visitation—and they found some similar things in that, when it was presented scientifically, that absolutely increased belief. They also found that if, at any point in time, it was said—there was any kind of disclaimer saying—the following claims are true, or that the following claims may or may not be true, or whatever—anything positive or negative—reduced belief, or reduced the increase in belief, following the segment. So, anything that triggered people's questioning about, is it true or is it not true, was actually a good thing. But they found the opposite in that the token skepticism at the end—a scientist coming in at the end and saying, you know, "We've evaluated this, and it's not true", ''increased'' belief in the thing, because it lent legitimacy to the whole enterprise—the very fact that a scientist was spending their time and giving their attention to it.

J: Oh, yeah.

S: So –

B: Is that a cultural change –

S: Well, maybe –

B: – or is it the study?

S: Well, all right. I don't know. I don't know what the answer to that is. But, one possible interpretation may be that the ''token'' ineffective skepticism actually has a negative effect in raising belief in the paranormal because it's lending false legitimacy, but if you give ''effective'', you know, analysis—

B: Yeah.

S: —effective skeptical analysis—maybe you could reverse that and bring it back down.

J: Yeah, from from what the article said, it was, I think, an equal paragraph on the skeptical perspective –

S: Yes.

J: – and, specifically –

S: We really do have to argue for equal time and for getting the skeptical position –

J: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

S: – not the talking head blurb token skepticism may not – may still be counterproductive.

J: And the thing that he said was that there was that the article, the paragraph, did a takedown of the people that were claiming to be scientists.

S: Mm-hmm.

J: So, it stripped their expertise away, in essence.

S: Yeah. Yeah.

J: So, you know, I think it's interesting. I think that we're hard-wired for these things. I find, unfortunately, more and more TV programs—hey, you guys noticing, what's with the reality TV? Like, why is reality TV taking over television? Have you asked yourself that question?

S: 'Cause it's cheap.

E: It's cheap.

S: It's cheap, yeah.

(''applause'')

== Live Q&A (51:06) ==
* Questions from the CSICon audience

{{transcribing
|transcriber = Cornelioid
}}

S: OK, we do have a few minutes for some Q&A. If you want to ask us a question—you can ask us anything. We won't necessarily answer, but you can ask—

Q1: Rebecca, i hate to break this to you, but NOC the beluga died five years ago.

R: God damn it!

J: Aww.

(''groans'')

R: God damn it, Tim Farley!

J: Tim Farley!

Q2: On a more serious note, Jay, apropos of what you said, i'm waiting for the skeptics community to have some reaction to the television show ''The Long Island Medium'' –

J: Oh.

S: Yeah.

Q2: – especially when she has kids on the program and she's telling them that, you know, she's talking to their dead parent.

J: Yeah, yeah. It's pathetic.

R: What a sick

S: I haven't brought myself to watch it yet. You know, i know it's out there. At some point, i think we probably should bite the bullet and then do an actual review, but i – the reports that i heard are, as you say, really abusive, very exploitative, not just that it's totally gullible nonsense. It's really exploitative. yep.

Q3: Love your podcast, listen a lot. Always wondered whose voice says, "And now it's time for Science or Fiction".

J: That's changed over the years.

S: The current voice is –

R: It's Izzy.

S: – Izzy. Izzy Lawrence.

R: Izzy Lawrence. She has a podcast called "Sunday Supplement". She's a skeptic and a stand-up comedian in England.

S: So that's a genuine British accent, unlike some of the previous people who have said it.

J: Yeah.

S: Yes?

Q4: Yeah, with this – the Italian decision about the geologists and not predicting the volcano—or the earthquakes—there could – there's, like, a silver lining here. This could be a boon to the insurance industry, because maybe geologists and seismologists need to take out malpractice insurance.

R: That's your "silver lining"? The insurance companies? "Well, i was really worried about the HMOs, but it looks like i'll be all right."

Q5: Hi, guys! I love the podcast and i love everything you guys do.

S: Really? Everything we do? You don't know half the stuff that we do.

R: You don't want to know.

Q5: Certainly everything i'm aware that you guys do –

S: Oh, OK.

Q5:

S: Good caveat.

J: He hasn't seen "Occ: The Skeptical Caveman" yet, so –

Q5: Oh, i certainly have!

J: Oh, and you like it?

Q5: Yeah, it's really good stuff!

R: Don't sound so surprised, Jay.

J: Just kidding.

Q5: Anyway. I'm a teaching assistant, and i help teach a lot of science courses—a lot of basic science courses—and we teach the scientific method—and most people understand the scientific method—but there's this other part that never gets explicitly put in there, like, this honesty and integrity built into it, like you need to make sure that the effect that you're trying to explain is really there, and that kind of stuff. Have you guys come up with a really good way to explain that part of science to people?

S: You mean that you just have to be ethical? Or you have to really care about the truth, i guess, is what you're saying?

Q5: Yes.

S: Yeah. I mean, i think—you're right, that is sort of implicit in the scientific process, that you're trying to find the actual answer, not just work backwards to the answer that you want to have—so, i think that's actually implicit in scientific skepticism. I mean, that's part of – that's one of our core values, is we want to know what's really ''really'' true, not just what seems to be true, and sometimes you have to dig really, really hard, and you have to be skeptical of your own conclusions. I mean, that ''is'' skepticism, i think, what you're saying. So, i think – combine that with the scientific method and you have scientific skepticism.

J: I think he was asking more about teaching the idea that you – we want to know the truth and be passionate about the truth –

S: Yeah.

J: and i – it's a hard thing to teach, i think. I think that, you know, we're all kind of freakish in the idea that we're into skepticism. It's – it is something that you could teach your kids, absolutely. But, you know, how do you teach an adult to get into the truth, and get rid of all the garbage that's in their heads? It's hard, as, you know, people get older, it's hard for them to learn that, i think. But i do agree with you. I think we need to inspire kids to—first off, teach them skepticism. Let's just start with that—i think that the caring will come with that.

== Science or Fiction (55:19) ==

S: Item number one. A new study finds that astronauts who spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. Item number two. Scientists have discovered the first feathered dinosaur in the western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers. And item number three. Researchers find that, at the molecular level, evolutionary changes can be highly predictable.

== Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:08:11) ==
<blockquote>Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.</blockquote>
J: Paul Kurtz!

{{Outro1}}

== References ==
<references/>

{{Navigation}}

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-17T11:41:36Z

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{{InfoBox
|episodeTitle = SGU Episode 381
|episodeDate = 3rd November 2012 
|episodeIcon = File:KurtzPic2.jpg 
|previous = 
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|rebecca = y 
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|guest1 = RW: Richard Wiseman
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|notesLink = http://www.theskepticsguide.org/archive/podcastinfo.aspx?mid=1&pid=381
|forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,43845.0.html
|qowText = Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality. 
|qowAuthor = [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] 
|}}

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

RW: – a live edition of my favorite podcast and radio show. So, we're going to have Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Jay Novella, Even Bernstein, and – and a woman –

(''laughter'')

RW: – join us. It's the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe!

(''applause'')

S: Hello, and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

(''applause'')

S: Today is Thursday, October 25th, 2012, and we are live from [http://www.csiconference.org/ CSICon 2012].

(''applause'')

Joining me, as always, are Bob Novella –

B: Hey everybody!

(''cheers'')

S: – Rebecca Watson –

R: Hello, everyone!

(''cheers'')

''audience member'': I love you, Rebecca!

R: I love you, too!

S: – Jay Novella...Jay Novella –

J: Wooooo! Rebecca, yeah!

(''cheers'')

R: I love you, Jay!

S: – and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hello, Nashville!

(''cheers'')

S: So, how're you guys doing? How do you like Nashville?

J: It's awesome. I didn't – I thought people were going to literally be playing guitar when I got off the airplane.

B: Oh, come on, Jay.

S: Yeah, in the airport, you know?

J: Yeah.

== This Day in Skepticism (1:28) ==
November 3, 1957 Sputnik 2 launched

S: So, Rebecca, you always start us off with a This Day in Science and Skepticism. This show will be going up on November 3rd, so, did anything happen that day?

R: Nope.

(''laughter'')

B: Ever?

R: Oh, all right. One thing happened. One thing happened! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_2 Sputnik 2] happened.

S: ''Sputnik 2: The Revenge''.

(''laughter'')

R: ''Son of Sputnik''.

S: ''Son of Sputnik''.

J: ''Son of Sputnik''!

R: That's right. Sputnik 2 you might know as "the one that killed the puppy".

(''awwws'')

R: No? Aww, that's weird, 'cause I really thought that this would go over well at a live event! Yeah, Sputnik 2 is the craft that took Laika into orbit, Laika being the Soviet space dog who became the first animal in orbit—for about, like, 10 minutes, before she died.

E: Well, you know –

S: A couple of hours. It was a couple of hours. They thought he was going to survive for about ten days –

R: I think she's a "she".

S: – ''she'' was going to survive –

E: Eh.

R: Get it right, Steve!

S: You know, asexual Russian names, I mean, come on. But, they thought that Laika was going to survive for about ten days, but then they had a little mishap with the cooling system, and –

E: Oops.

S: Yeah. – got a little hot in the capsule—104 degrees, they said in (''inaudible'')

E: That'd be a hot dog. Yep.

(''groans'')

B: Oh, come on. My god.

E: Thank you. I'll be here all the weekend.

R: How – can we just take a moment, just to take a poll of the audience: How are our dead dog jokes doing? Good?

J: Yes!

(''applause'')

R: OK. All right. Yeah.

J: You know what? I didn't know until we researched this item that it was a one-way mission.

R: Yeah.

E: Mm-hmm.

J: That's really nasty.

S: Well, the capsule returned.

(''laughter'')

E: Yeah, well –

S: About 162 days later, it burned up in the atmosphere. But, yeah, they never intended to bring Laika back.

J: No, they actually were going to euthanize her with poison food after the tenth day, I think, right?

R: This is seriously the worst item ever. What was I thinking when I picked it?

S: There – there's Laika.

E: Aww. Aww.

R: Oh yeah! I didn't pick it! Steve forced me to!

E: But, we'd never know who this dog was if it didn't go on Sputnik 2, right? I mean, this would be an otherwise – another animal.

R: No, yeah, and I'm sure Laika appreciates the fame she gets from ''beyond the grave''.

E: She got her fifteen minutes.

== In Memorium ==
=== Paul Kurtz (3:45) ===
* 1925-2012

S: Well, we are going to start the new segment of the show with an ''in memoriam''. We do like to, on the ''Skeptic's Guide'', pause to remember those members of the skeptical community who have passed, and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] died several days ago, just the day before the organizers were coming down to the conference. He died on Sunday. He was 85 years old. It was 1925 to 2012, so that is 86. I can do math. (''audience laughter'') You'll know why i was confused in a moment.

R: 'Cause you're terrible at math?

S: Yes. So, before we get the show started, Ron Lindsay and Kendrick Frazier talked about Paul Kurtz. You know, he was one of the giants of the skeptical movement, of the skeptical community. You know, he was largely responsible for organizing the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, founding Prometheus Books, CFI, [http://www.secularhumanism.org/ Secular Humanism]. He was an academic, a philosopher. He really gave a lot of weight to the movement early on. He made it to that – he broke it to that next level. It wasn't that, you know, before he came on board. So he has to be remembered for that. We did have some interactions with Paul along the years. The first year that we started – (''audience cooing'')

R: Baby Steve!

E: Aww.

S: I was a little younger back then.

R: He's three years old there.

B: He's only half-grey there.

S: (''laughing'') I'm only half-grey!

E: A little less grey, yep.

S: You can mark my age by my greyness up until about ten years ago, when i went totally grey. Right when we got started, in 1996, you know, CSICOP, now CSI, you know, they were the big national skeptical organization. They'd definitely – They took us under their wing, you know, gave us their support, their local membership list, so that we could get our movement going. And i remember meeting Paul at the first World Skeptics Conference, and he was immediately—like, you know, your grandfather—like, you know, very, very comfortably took on that air of being a mentor. It's like, "Yeah, this is great. You're welcome to the skeptical movement." So i definitely remember him fondly in that way. A few years later, Paul organized a meeting of the local skeptical groups. In the picture here you can see me again with Bob, Perry, and Evan. The four of us came up together –

J: Now, if i remember correctly, Rebecca, you and i were off being badass somewhere else, right?

R: I think that's what was happening, yeah.

S: – and, i think, in the foreground, that's Colonel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Nickell Joe Nickell], isn't it?

E: Colonel.

S: Yeah, he had broke his leg in Spain, or something?

R: Round of applause for Colonel Joe Nickell!

E: I remember that.

(''applause'')

S: Joe actually is going to come up, and he's going to read a poem that he wrote, i believe, about Paul.

JN: Paul was a great supporter of the arts, and i hope he would have liked this. The poem is called "Book of Seasons: An elegy". (''Uncertain re: permission to reproduce poem'')

S: Thank you, Joe.

=== Leon Jaroff (7:34) ===
* 1926-2012

S: This same weekend, Saturday before the show, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_(magazine) Leon Jaroff] also died. ''He'' was 85, hence my confusion. So, Leon Jariff—not a big name in the skeptical community recently, and if you ask, you know, people at conventions like this if they knew who he was – I mean, in fact, right before the show Rebecca said to me, "Who's Leon Jaroff?"

R: (''indignant gasp'')

S: Sorry, Rebecca.

(''audience laughter'')

S: But he was perhaps one of the most skeptical journalists that we have had.

B: Yeah.

S: He was the science columnist for ''Time Magazine''. It was he who said, "You know, popularizing science is important, you know, we should start a science-dedicated magazine." And that was ''Discover Magazine''. That was him. He was not afraid to be a hard-nosed skeptic when writing about scientific issues. So, for example, when writing about chiropractors, [http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,213482,00.html he wrote],

<blockquote>
Chiropractors also employ a bewildering variety of weird practices to diagnose their patients. Some use applied kinesiology, a muscle test that supposedly can diagnose allergies and diseased organs. Hair analysis and iris readings are commonplace in the profession. Even sillier are many of the treatments that chiropractors use and recommend: homeopathic potions, colon irrigation, magnetic therapy, enzyme pills, colored-light therapy, and something called "balancing body energy," among other mystical procedures with undocumented effects.
</blockquote>

S: That's from a mainstream journalist writing in ''Time Magazine''. Do we see this kind of thing today? I don't think so.

B: Nope.

(''audience applause'')

S: So, you know, we do have to, I think, also note the support that Jaroff gave to such a good science journalism, and that kind of hard-nosed, skeptical science journalism is definitely something we miss. That's a void that, I think, that we in the skeptical community have to fill, but, unfortunately, it is a void.

== News Items ==
=== Big Bang Conference at CERN (9:31)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19870036 Big Bang and religion mixed in Cern debate]

S: Rebecca –

R: Yes!

S: – this is a different quote. It's not as good a quote.

<blockquote>
Science in isolation is great for producing stuff, but not so good for producing ideas.
</blockquote>

R: Mm-hmm.

S: Who said that?

R: That was said by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Pinsent Andrew Pinsent] at the Ramsey Center for Science and Religion. What I particularly liked about this quote is that it is completely reversed – it is the exact opposite of what I would have suggested.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I would say that science is actually really good at ideas, but, in order to produce stuff, you have to add something else. You know, like, they might be able to figure out lasers, but to make a CD player you need a marketing executive.

S: Or death ray.

R: Thank you. Yeah, of course. Why didn't I go there first?

(''laughter'')

R: Yeah, so, this quote comes from a recent article that the BBC produced: "Big Bang and religion mixed in CERN debates". Apparently, there was a conference recently that CERN held—you remember CERN, you know, the guys who, apparently, may have found –

J: Higgs!

R: – the Higgs boson.

S: A boson with Higgs-like properties.

R: A Higgs-like thing.

S: Boson, yeah.

R: A Higgish. I like "Higgish" –

B: "Higgish"?

R: – a little bit.

J: (''laughing'') "A little bit!"

S: "Higgy"?

B: (''singing, inaudible'') ''Higgy again."

R: So, yes. Apparently, I don't know the purpose – I don't know what, who dreamt this up, but what I'm thinking is that someone was concerned that they may have found a particle that many people know as the "God particle", and, so, they're concerned that they're going to be excommunicated or, you know, that people will rebel—religious people will rebel—against science. Basically, we'll have some sort of Dark Ages–esque thing happening, and, so, maybe somebody at CERN thought, "Well, we should have this conference where we talk about how religious people should be OK with the Higgs boson."

B: Mm-hmm.

R: So, those are the good intentions that I'm assuming are behind this conference that has speakers such as this. The quotes in here are pretty fun, and none of them have any amount of intelligence to them. Steve, you're the one who brought this one to my attention here –

S: Yes.

R: I'm interested in what – we've talked a little bit before about things like the Templeton Foundation, which is an organization that gives out a prize – gives out prizes to people who can explore science in a religious context, basically. And I'm a bit opposed to it. I feel like it's muddying the waters. I think we don't ''need'' to bring religion into what people are doing at CERN.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I think those two things are happily separated, but I'm interested in knowing your feelings on this.

S: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think trying to introduce theology into science is misguided. You know, this conference was specifically about the origin of the universe. So, it's not just about scientific issues in particular. I think the thinking, at least on the part of the theologians who were quoted about this conference, is that, well, you're talking about the origin of the universe. That's a really big question, and religion is about answering the really big questions—not science. Science is narrow and reductionist, and makes stuff, but can't really grapple with the big questions of our origins. And that's exactly incorrect, as you were saying. That's a complete knock to science. I mean, science is, in fact, the only human intellectual endeavor that ''can'' answer any empirical question about the origin of the universe.

R: Yeah.

J: So, was the conference, though, the scientists trying to appease religious people? The saying that –

R: Well, you know, apparently, this was – the conference was done on the part of CERN, according to BBC, and that's what I find troubling. I'm totally OK with a conference that religious people host, you know, and the topic might be "How do we –" you know, "How do we consider our theology now that we know ''X'', ''Y'', and ''Z''—now that science has discovered this? What does that mean for ''our'' belief system?" And I think that's fine, but, you know, apparently, the theologians who were there seem to think that this was a chance to ''debate'' the scientists –

J: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

R: – and, no! Why would you do that? Debate is completely the opposite direction of where you want to go.

S: It also – I mean, the quotes seem to me like a desperate grasp at relevance, trying to make it seem like they're – you know, that theology is still relevant to questions about origins of the universe, when, in fact, science has completely displaced it from that endeavor.

J: So, did it end up with, like, a fistfight? Like, what happened?

(''laughter'')

E: Science won.

R: I haven't found any evidence of any arrests, so, apparently –

S: There were no fisticuffs?

J: That really must've been awkward as hell, though, right? Like, they're like, sitting there, like, after a whole day, and they're like, "Uh, OK, it's over now."

E: Something tells me they're not going to be doing this again. They're going to learn from this.

S: I don't know.

R: Well, I mean, it's actually not even – like, I wish it had been that exciting. But, instead, it just seems like it was really ''boring'' –

E: Yeah.

R: – and nobody came to ''any'' conclusions. Because you ''can't'', you know?

S: Yeah.

R: You're just having a discussion of, like, well, you know, "But what don't we know?"

=== Italian Earthquake Scientists Convicted (14:57)===
* [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/22/us-italy-earthquake-court-idUSBRE89L13V20121022 Italian scientists convicted over earthquake warning]

S: Now, we're trying to keep – we like to keep our live shows really light –

(''laughter'')

E: So far, so good.

S: So, we thought we'd talk about a horrible earthquake that killed over three hundred people.

E: Yeah, let's go there.

R: Good intro. Good intro there.

S: But there's actually a better story embedded in that. There were six Italian scientists, who were recently convicted of manslaughter –

B: Yeah.

S: – for failure to properly communicate the warnings about the upcoming L'Aquila earthquake in 2009. Yeah, we've been following this story, you know, since it happened. The quick version is that there were a number of small tremors in this very earthquake-prone part of Italy, and the geologists—the local geologists—you know, were following it. And their opinion was that, well, these tremors are very common. Most such tremors are not followed by major quakes. Most major quakes are not preceded by these kinds of tremors. So, the probability of a major quake occurring is not particularly higher, you know, now, just because of these tremors, than at any time, and, therefore, there's no cause for alarm. Now, they were specifically asked during a press conference, "Should we panic?" You know, "Should we evacuate?" And they said "No. There's no reason to evacuate. Stay at home and drink a glass of wine."

B: Steve, was this about a year ago that we covered this?

S: 2009. 2009 –

B: Oh, wow. (''inaudible'')

S: – so, was the quake, and then the court trial started about a year ago, and now the decision came down that the six scientists were convicted to six years – I think six years in prison and something like, you know, millions of dollars in damages for manslaughter—for the deaths of the people who didn't evacuate because they – of their reassurances that there was nothing to be worried about.

R: That's horrific.

J: Well, i, you know, to play devil's advocate real quick, if there was true negligence—like, if they didn't follow through with things that they needed to do, if they did a terrible job at analyzing the data, in a fashion that – where the data could have been analyzed better, or they actually weren't asking their peers for the information—i can understand if there was extreme negligence.

S: Right.

J: But, even still, like, that's very hard to prove, and I just don't understand –

S: Well, I mean, not really. The question is, was their opinion within the standard for their profession? That's—in my opinion—that's the only real question here. You can't be blamed for being wrong, right? You can't be blamed for a bad outcome if you were following the standard. Now, of course, scientists can't predict earthquakes. You can't predict when an earthquake is going to occur. That's the bottom line. What – every statement they said was truthful, you know, every factual statement. "These tremors do not necessarily mean that there's an earthquake coming, and they are not a reason to evacuate. We don't evacuate every city where there's tremors because there might be a major quake, because it's not that predictive." So, that was not negligent. No, and they weren't really being accused of negligence. They were basically being accused of poorly communicating to the public. It seems to be based on a lot of false premises about what scientists ''can know''—what an expert about, you know, an earthquake, a geologist, expert ''can know''.

R: Yeah, they've been convicted for not using a magical power they don't have.

S: Yeah.

R: They might as well have convicted all the psychics in Italy for not accurately predicting this earthquake.

J: I think we need to be careful—i don't disagree, of course. I don't think that these men should be going to jail for this at all—but it is an important thing to state that, I think, people should go to prison, or get in trouble ''legally'', if they are misrepresenting science or – right? So you see where I'm going with this.

S: Well, yeah. If you are –

J: If you're setting that premise—you're saying, "Hey, these guys screwed up, they didn't do what they were supposed to do, they didn't communicate to us the real possible outcomes here", whatever—and, like –

S: Yeah.

J: – I'll reiterate, I don't think that they should be going to jail—

B: Well, I don't agree –

J: —but, I do think, though, that that standard that that court set needs to be applied all the way down the ladder.

B: Yeah, but, Jay, like, someone saying that "I have a cure for cancer and it's scientifically proven" but it's a sham?

J: Exactly, right? So, if they're going to actually take those scientists out and say "You're done. You're not performing science anymore and you're going to jail for that bad decision or information you gave", well, hello! Then, you know, all of a sudden, a million lawsuits need to be filed.

S: But, it wasn't – to clarify, though, it wasn't ''bad'', it was just ''unlucky''. I mean, doctors encounter this all the time, you know. You are asked to decide, you know, what tests to order, what diagnoses a patient might have. There's a whole lot of liability involved with that. You can't be convicted of malpractice just because of a bad outcome if what you did was within the standard of care.

B: Right.

S: So, was the information they were giving to the public within the standard for the profession? If the answer is "yes", the fact that there was a low-probability earthquake the next week is not their fault.

E: Right.

S: It doesn't change the fact – you know, if they're saying there's a 99% chance that there's not going to be an earthquake, and then the 1% thing happens, they were still right –

J: Yeah.

S: – in saying that it was unlikely.

R: Yeah.

E: Didn't the evidence show, basically, that they performed correctly, essentially? They did not –

S: That's the consensus. I mean, so, there's worldwide outrage, especially among the scientific community (''inaudible'') –

B: This has got to be shot down in a higher court.

S: Yeah.

B: This can't – can't possibly stand.

E: I hope so.

S: Well, there's two appeals left. There's two appeals, and they will stay out of prison before those appeals. So, the United States National Academy of Science, the Royal Academy of Science—the Royal Society, rather—issued a joint statement saying that "that is why we must protest the verdict in Italy. If it becomes a precedent in law, it could lead to a situation in which scientists will be afraid to give expert opinion."

J: Yeah, that's devastating.

E: Mm-hmm.

S: So, it would have a chilling effect. What – you know, what geologist is going to, you know, talk to the public in Italy now, if you could wind up in jail and, you know, financially devastated, and your career devastated, because you can't predict the future, you know, because you don't have a crystal ball? It's insane. It's insane.

J: Yeah. To think that they're going after these scientists, and they're not going after the rampant quackery throughout –

S: Well, there's that, too.

E: I wonder how much pressure they came under from, like, the families, the survivors, of this terrible, terrible devastation –

J: Oh yeah, they had to hang someone.

E: – and I imagine they put a lot of pressure on politicians and other people in order to hold ''somebody'' accountable.

J: They have to. They had to send someone down the river for that.

B: Did they have a trial?

S: Yeah.

B: Did they have witnesses and experts coming in?

S: Yeah. Yep.

B: I'd love to know the details of what exactly happened, because how could –

(''laughter'')

S: So, we'll see if the worldwide backlash has an effect. I mean, again, they do have two appeals left, so we'll definitely follow it.

=== Whale Makes Human Sounds (21:35)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20026938 Beluga whale 'makes human-like sounds']

S: All right, Rebecca, so, we have a cute animal –

R: Thank you.

S: – we're going to talk about now.

J: This is a happy one!

R: Just tell me this narwhal or whatever is alive.

S: It's a whale.

E: It's alive and well.

S: It's a beluga whale.

B: It sort of looks like a narwhal.

R: Tell me this beluga is alive!

E: That's NOC the beluga. They're very much alive.

R: It's not a beluga?

E: "NOC". N-O-C.

S: "NOC". NOC the beluga.

R: Oh! "That's NOC."

(''laughter'')

R: I was about to say, "No, ''that is a beluga''."

S: Sounds like a children's song.

E: It does sound like a children's –

S: Evan, sing it.

E: No.

S: OK.

J: Don't change it! Please don't –

E: If my daughter was here, maybe. But, no. So, what's important about NOC the beluga? Well, OK, so, picture this: You are part of the National Marine Mammal Foundation, OK, and you're in the tank, swimming around with the whales and stuff, and, all of a sudden, you hear somebody—you hear a voice—call your name. Something to the effect that – "Get out of the water! Get out of the water!" So, you're in the tank and you come up and you say, "OK, who told me to get out of the water? Who told me to get out of the water?" And the other scientists and people are looking around you like, "Nobody? What the heck are you talking about?" And, he's like, "Well, I definitely ''heard'' that!" Well, what did he actually hear? Well, apparently, NOC the beluga made some noises very reminiscent of human noises. Beluga whales are, you know, incredible creatures. Their calls – They're known as the canaries of the sea. They have a very high-frequency, high-pitched tone to their noises that they make, but they make lots of different kinds of noises. They can emit up to eleven different kinds of sounds—crackles, whistles, trills, squawks—all sorts of things. But, it's been rumored that these whales can emit noises that sound like humans talking. And, for the first time, they've actually recorded NOC the whale making these noises, and they have it on tape. And we have it on tape.

R: Nah.

(''NOC makes unnervingly human-sounding noises'')

R: Did he maybe just swallow a kazoo?

(''laughter'')

J: Everybody has a drunk neighbor that makes those noises.

(''laughter'')

E: Oh, gosh. Who knows what the heck he was saying? You know, dolphins have been taught to mimic noises that kind of sound like human voices, but, before this, there's been no record of an animal ''spontaneously'' coming up and making these kinds of noises. This is the first evidence, the first hard evidence we have of it.

R: Here's – I have a theory. I have a theory. I have a theory that – so, whales, in general, are incredibly intelligent –

E: Oh yeah.

R: – possibly as smart as us, but they don't want thumbs, or any way to talk to us –

E: Or fire.

R: – and I feel like they do, basically – That's true. No, I saw Spongebob once. There was fire under the sea. I think it can be done.

S: Yep, but they don't have nanotechnology, though.

R: They don't. So, my theory is that whales are basically, like – they have – it's like they have locked-in syndrome, you know? Where they're just –

J: Oh, no.

R: – super-intelligent, and there's all these people around them, and they're just messing with them –

J: So, he was screaming, actually –

R: Yeah! And, so, he's been like, his whole life, he's been in this stupid little – like, he's in captivity, right? So, he's been in this stupid little aquarium, and he's just, like, "I hate all of you! And I'm going to will myself to tell you, because you're too stupid to understand!"

E: So, basically, what's going on here is, the whale has learned to change – rapidly change pressure within its naval cavity in order to create these sounds. And, it hasn't – the whale is able to over-inflate what's known as its vestibular sac in its blowhole, which is normally acts to stop water from basically coming in. So, the whale is going through a lot of, you know, effort, essentially, to try to make these noises. And I'm sure they're going to be trying to figure out exactly, you know, basically, ''why'' is the whale doing this?

S: Well, he just – this whale was – did spend his life in captivity –

E: Yeah.

S: – so, he did hear human speech a lot, and maybe he's just, to some extent, mimicking the sounds that he grew up hearing his whole life.

J: It's definitely – it definitely has a human sound to it, in the cadence and everything.

S: Yeah.

J: I mean, he's intelligent enough to mimic a human, which is really cool.

R: Yeah.

J: And, then, you always think, you know, if he can mimic a human—if his brain is advanced that much—you know, maybe he –

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But, is he mimicking humans or making fun of humans? You know, like people make fun of other languages?

R: Yeah, he's just like "Weh! Weh! Weh! This is what you sound like!"

E: Yeah. You stupid bald monkey and (''inaudible'')! Get out of here!

B: Sounds like a false dichotomy.

=== PANDAS Controversy (26:18)===
* [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/a-pandas-story/ A PANDAS Story]

S: So, we're going to talk about – going from talking about beluga whales to talking about PANDAS! Except, we're not talking about pandas, because we're talking about –

E: Wait.

R: Stop toying with my emotions, Steve!

S: I had to put a cute picture of a panda up there for you, Rebecca. We are talking about pediatric autoimmune –

R: It makes sense.

S: – neuropsychiatric disorder associated with –

E: I didn't know PANDA was an acronym. Cool!

R: Steve, I miss the panda.

S: – streptococcal infection—or, PANDAS. See? There's a panda.

(''laughter, cooing'')

E: Aww!

R: Yay.

S: We're talking about PANDAS –

E: Aww.

R: Boo.

J: Oh.

E: That's worse.

S: – which is a legitimately controversial medical diagnosis! So, essentially, what happens is, children suddenly develop ticks—like Tourette syndrome—and psychiatric disorders—obsessive–compulsive disorder—and it is thought that, in some cases, that it is actually – the inciting event is an infection—bacteria—streptococcal infection. Now, of course, it's always difficult to establish the reality of a new disease. Unless you get all your ducks in a row, and all the, you know, pathology all adds up, it's sometimes difficult to identify a legitimate new syndrome and to prove that – cause and effect. So, correlation is one thing. As we know, correlation is not ''necessarily'' causation. And, so, the syndrome exists. There are – the number of physicians who have identified the sudden onset psychiatric – neuropsychiatric disorder, and in some cases it is temporally associated with a streptococcal infection. But that's not the same thing as saying that the strep infection ''caused'' the neuropsychiatric syndrome. So, that's – and there's the controversy. Now, of course, we live in the modern Internet age. So, as soon as a scientist says, "I think that there's this syndrome—I want to call it PANDAS—and – sort of, you know, a psychiatric syndrome provoked by a bacterial infection", of course, there are now support groups, and there's groups on the Internet, and there's patient groups supporting this diagnosis before the science is even settled. And, then, of course, once that happens, when you try to do more science, or have any kind of discussion about whether or not this is a real syndrome, you have parents and patient groups and advocacy groups, you know, calling you all kinds of nasty names and saying there's a conspiracy against people with PANDAS, it's all the insurance companies and Big Pharma and evil doctors or whatever. So, that's the situation that we're in the middle of right now, unfortunately, is that, before the science is settled, you know, there's the scientific controversy, then there's the public controversy. This came to the media attention recently because of a 16-year-old girl called Elizabeth Wray. She developed, you know, a syndrome like PANDAS with ticks and psychological disorders, was diagnosed by a physician with PANDAS, and then was transferred to Boston's Children's Hospital for – presumably for further treatment of PANDAS. Now, the story that is going around the PANDAS community is that once she got to Boston University—or Boston Children's Hospital—she was told – the parents were told, "We don't believe that PANDAS is real – that it exists", and then they essentially admitted their daughter to the psychiatric unit and started treating her with psychiatric medications. Now, I don't know if that's true, because the doctors and the hospital are not telling their side of the story because of patient confidentiality. So, we don't know what their side of the story is. We only know the parents' side of the story, filtered through the PANDAS community. Unfortunately, now there's – this story has taken on a life of its own. There's a Free Elizabeth Wray movement going on within the PANDAS community, they're telling all kinds of horror stories about Boston Children's Hospital, and, you know, we can't verify any of it. What's interesting in reading about it is that each side has their narrative—and I wrote about this on Science-Based Medicine—because one of the things that – the ideas that we're wrestling with in the skeptical community is that—well, all right, we have, I think, a good approach to critical thinking, we understand a lot about self-deception, about the nature of science and pseudoscience—but we don't always have a good story to tell the public, or we have a hard time convincing mainstream outlets that we have – that our story is an interesting and good one. You know, we have to really market our narrative—the skeptical narrative. When you read about stories like this, the PANDAS proponents have a really compelling emotional narrative. It may be total B.S.—i don't know—but it's very compelling. They have a story of a child suffering from an unusual disease, parents who just want to do what's right for her—I believe all those things are correct—and then they are, essentially, being abused by a dismissive and skeptical medical establishment who doesn't believe in this disease, and that is treating their child with perhaps harmful, you know, psychiatric medications. They even – this went to court. Apparently, the hospital thought that the parents were being negligent in not allowing them to give proper standard of care—psychiatric treatment—to their child, and they wanted to have custody taken away from the parents, and they wanted to admit Elizabeth to a locked psychiatric ward—again, not sure – I can't verify those from the hospital's side of things. A judge – a Massachusetts judge essentially made her a ward of the state while they sorted out what was going on, but they did not grant the hospital their request to treat her in the way that they wanted to. So, they essentially just – the state took her out of everybody's hands for a moment – for the moment. So, it's interesting. Of course, the PANDAS community, again, is up in arms, you know. The court essentially took custody away from these parents that are only trying to do what's right for their daughter. But, of course, you could see the other narrative—you know, let's assume that the physicians think that—even if you think – whether or not you think PANDAS really exists—they think that she has a psychiatric illness, the parents are in denial, they're pursuing this false diagnosis, and they're, you know, refusing standard medical care. That's a story, too.

B: What if you just pulled out the whole strep association, and just treat it like a "pandisorder"? Is their beef that it's associated with strep, and they don't think there's any association? Why don't they just treat it like a neuropsychiatric disorder –

S: Yeah.

B: – and forget about the whole strep association?

S: Well, because the strep association would lead you to treat with things like antibiotics. So, that's the question: Should you treat it with antibiotics, or should you treat her like a psychiatric (''inaudible'') patient?

J: Why not both? I mean, why wouldn't you –

S: Well, she has had at least one round of antibiotics. You can also treat it like an autoimmune disease, with, like, intravenous globulin, for example. So, I mean, these are real medical questions. Do we treat it like an infection, do we treat it like a post-infectious auto-immune disease, or do we treat it like a psychiatric disorder? Those are real questions.

J: Steve, are you saying pandas don't exist? Let me just get this straight.

(''laughter'')

S: So, well, I did – to give a serious answer to your sarcastic question, I did –

R: My favorite kind.

S: – take the opportunity – I'm good that way. I'm good that way. I did take the opportunity just to familiarize myself with the PANDAS literature—again, I always emphasize, I'm no an expert in this, but I can read the literature and give my opinion like a science journalist—i think it's genuinely controversial. When I read the research, there's lots of – the ducks are not in a row. So, when you do things like treat kids who apparently have PANDAS with antibiotics in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, they don't necessarily improve. And, if you look for the antibodies that are supposed to be there, they don't necessarily correlate with the disease onset or with the existence of strep. So –

B: So, this is clearly not like autism and vaccines. It's just more complicated than that.

S: So, no. So, right. So, autism and vaccines, like, I would say, that's been studied enough to say that autism's – that autism is not caused by vaccines. We can say that. We can make the negative statement. I cannot make the negative statement that PANDAS does not exist, only that the research so far has not reached the threshold where we can agree that it does exist and that there is some actual negative data—there's some positive data, too—so it's legitimately controversial. It did remind me, though, of the chronic Lyme disease controversy—

R: Yeah.

S: —which is very common in New England—again, where they think that a number of symptoms, including neurological symptoms, can be caused by a bacterial infection and treated with antibiotics. And the same – there's a lot of overlap in those two communities, you know.

J: Steve, are you saying that the public has unrealistic expectations?

S: Well, I think – it's partly that. I mean, I think the public is uncomfortable with the uncertainty, and they like this sort of hero–villain narrative, so they paint the medical community as the villains, and—except for those maverick physicians who understand. They're Lyme-literate, or they understand PANDAS, so they're the heroes—and, then, the insurance companies don't want to pay for, you know, over-and-over recurrent courses of IV antibiotics, so they're the villains, you know. They're not—I'm not defending insurance companies, but sometimes they actually – sometimes they're right. They don't want to pay for things that are not science-based or evidence-based. So, it's complicated. And, you know, how do we – so, how do we deal with a child with this disorder when we don't know what the best scientific answer is—we don't know if it's autoimmune, infectious, or psychiatric? We just have to, you know, do the best we can—and there may be different physicians who would take different approaches—but to portray it as "PANDAS definitely exists. If you don't believe in it, you're dismissive and you're mean and evil, or you're protecting some kind of Big Pharma grant that you're getting"—they always bring that up—rather than saying, "You know, we really want to know the right answer, but we just haven't found it yet. It's still – it's legitimately controversial."

J: Yeah, I think what you're saying does confirm what I was thinking, is that the public wants an answer, science is not yet done figuring this one out, and –

S: Yeah. Like the earthquake one, right?

J: Yeah.

S: Sometimes the answer is, "We don't know yet", you know. "We need to do more research". In medicine, we have to make decisions with imperfect, you know, information, so, you know.

J: Wouldn't it be typical, too – like, let's say that this is happening over and over again –

S: Yeah.

J: – like, at some point, some doctors are going to come up with different ideas, they're going to try it out, you know. The trial-and-error process happens, and—i hate to say it, but—this girl is probably going to be one of the people that gets tested on with new ideas.

S: Well, I mean – well, if you're really testing then you should be doing a research protocol. If you're just applying the best knowledge that we have to an individual patient, that's – a certain amount of trial and error with that that's not really experimentation. So, there is a difference there. So, I don't know. The other interesting question that I'm kind of alluding to is, what role do the patient or the advocacy groups play? I think, a lot of times, that they are helpful in raising awareness for a disease or a disorder and raising funding, and advocating for patients. You know, I've seen, I think, there's a lot of very effective, very good patient advocacy groups out there. But, sometimes, they put their nickel down on a specific scientific answer, and that's not their job.

J: Yeah.

S: It's not their job to predict or demand that science give them the answer they want. And, you know, unfortunately, some people want the answer to be "an infection"—not "genes", not, you know, "We don't know".

J: Yeah. It's curable. That's the one they want.

S: Of course, who – that's the answer I would want to have! "It's something outside that is, you know, foreign, that can be cured, and that can reverse my child to the way that they were". Who – every parent wants that to be the answer, but sometimes you – you know, you have to step back from what you want and listen to the evidence. That's the – that's the scientist's, that's the physician's job, you know. You should just let them do their job, you know.

J: All right, so, I want to bring up a quick side point on this.

S: Yeah.

J: So, as an example, let's say, fifty years ago, let's say this was happening. What stance do you think the public would have differently than what we're seeing today?

S: It's the same, and this ''did'' happen fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, you know, she would be diagnosed with neurosyphilis—maybe not somebody who was sixteen, but that was the stand-in for what we now would, you know, the same subculture would diagnose with chronic Lyme. There were believers in that. There were physicians who believed in treatments like chelation therapy, you know, and science proved it wrong, and they said, "Well, we don't care, we're going to still do it. We're going to come up with – We're just going to keep coming up with special pleading and alternate theories, and form our own societies and our own – and just keep doing it, and say that it's all a conspiracy."

J: Mm-hmm.

S: So, but, I think that it's just the turnaround time is so much faster because of the Internet. Like, another example: CCSVI, right? The alleged blockage in the veins that drained blood from the brain, causing multiple sclerosis. It's that – that whole process—of Dr. Zamboni proposing this entity and a treatment, to it being researched, to it being refuted, to, you know, patient advocacy groups springing up and calling for conspiracies and calling for research and demanding that science give them the answer that they want—all has taken place within a few years. We've seen that cycle happen right before our eyes. So, the Internet is just making it happen a lot quicker and a lot bigger, I think. But it's always been this way.

J: So do you have any ideas on what we could do? Could the skeptical community do anything to help this (''inaudible'')?

S: Well, I think what we do is, we discuss the issue from a science, logical, critical thinking point of view, you know. We point out the role of science in this, and we, I think, we try to bring the public discourse to a level that can deal with it in a more productive way, rather than the conspiracy mongering, sort of lowest-common-denominator that it would otherwise sink to.

J: Yeah.

=== Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44)===
* pnd

S: Well, let's move on. Jay, we're talking about how the media presents stories about paranormal activities.

J: Yeah, this is interesting. So, a professor decided to—Professor Brewer decided that—because what we're seeing over the years is a very obvious interest, in the general public, to news articles, and to TV shows, that talk about ghosts—and, you know, we've all seen the ''Ghost Hunter'' TV show—and, to people like us, at best, we watch it, and it's fun, right? 'Cause it's ridiculous and entertaining, and we like to see people from our perspective—a skeptical perspective—they're acting foolishly. But, there are a lot of people that are watching this, and they're riveted. Like, they really love it and they think a lot of it's real—and, I'm sure, to a certain degree, I can't say everyone that watches it and thinks everything about it is real—but, in the end, there's a huge entertainment factor there, and, unfortunately, to us skeptics, we feel like there's a lot of people that simply believe it, and that's their favorite entertainment. And I know a lot of people—I'm friends with a lot of people—that literally have active discussions on Facebook all the time, that I dip into, that are talking about the latest TAPS show. It would be be, "Can you believe it?" and "I knew that place was haunted!", and they're like, you know, getting whooped up.

S: I don't get it. I just don't get it. Nothing happens!

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

R: That's not true! That's not true.

E: Like "Seinfeld", yeah.

S: But, I mean, but they never find a ghost.

R: Steve, Steve. Did you feel that?

(''laughter'')

R: That happens! That happens all the time.

(''applause'')

R: They feel so much.

J: The thing is, you know –

S: I want to see a [http://www.hark.com/clips/pnzwffccqk-10-people-witnessed-a-free-floating-full-torso-vaporous-apparition full, floating torso] drift across the camera lens. Then I'll be impressed.

B: I still won't believe it. (''inaudible'')

S: No, but at least it'll be entertaining.

J: A lot of the shows, though, they're all right on the cusp, you know, of the noise, right? They're always right on that cusp. They're always ''just'' seeing something, or something falls over, you know? Or there's a noise from upstairs, or whatever, and it's never – they never give you that, you know? You don't get that –

R: This, actually – this came up—tomorrow I'll be talking about the [http://paranormalroadtrip.org/ paranormal road trip] that I just went on with [http://www.jonronson.com/ Jon Ronson] and [http://richardwiseman.wordpress.com/ Richard Wiseman] that got us here—and, at one of the stops, we were at a – we did talk to someone in a "haunted museum", and she was telling us that "the ghost hunters were there, and it was very exciting because there was a noise in the attic, and there were steps (''step sounds'') even though nobody was up there, and so the ghost hunter ran over and climbed up the ladder and looked into the attic, and, just then, a lady, dressed all in white, came ''flying at him'', and he shrieked in horror and fell down the ladder, and it was all really dramatic", and we were just completely blown away, obviously. We were riveted –

E: Yeah, well.

R: – and we said, "We cannot ''wait'' to see that footage!"

(''groans'')

R: – and she said, "Actually, I mean, it was so good, they didn't actually get that on camera.

B: Darn it!

R: No, all the cameras were down in another room somewhere."

J: Yeah, of course.

E: Well.

S: That was like –

R: "There's literally no evidence of it", though. Yeah.

S: – Ed Warren. We were investigating Ed Warren. He told us this story of being in a haunted house, and they had a local news crew over there, and, like, for two hours, they videotaped things flying around the room, you know, like, I say, really impressive, you know, smoking-gun evidence of paranormal activity. We're like, "Great! Can we see that footage?"

E: Sure!

J: "Yeah!"

S: "You know what? They taped over it for the news segment later that night."

(''laughter'')

S: Go figure. Stupid news crew.

J: So, I – I'm going to ask a couple of questions that I want you guys to not answer right now, but just think about it, 'cause these are pretty obvious questions, but I think they're interesting. "Why do people believe, or like to believe, in the paranormal? What's the attraction?" It's an interesting question if you think about it. There are people that ''really'' seek it out and love it. And there's something exciting about it. There's something kind of visceral about it. To my mind—to a skeptical mind—I don't have a connection to it. I just don't see what that allure is, other than, maybe—because I do like horror movies, and I do like to get scared. I love being actually scared sitting in a movie theater. It doesn't happen that often, but when it does happen it's very thrilling—and, maybe they're just having a lot of those thrilling moments. It's easier for them to get scared.

R: But, also, I mean, don't you think, maybe, it's got something to do with the fact that, maybe, we're not going to rot in the ground and die and never see our loved ones again...? Maybe?

J: Maybe? It's – you know, I'm not going to say no, but when I think about it, there's something thrilling about it. I'm not thinking, as I'm being thrilled in a horror movie, "Oh, I'm defying death by being thrilled right now!" That's not happening. I'm just – there is something – it's like, you know, eating something really spicy that hurts.

S: Yeah, but to –

J: It hurts, but it's good at the same time, right?

E: Uh.

S: To a lot of people, definitely, you know, evidence of ghosts is evidence of the afterlife. That's the appeal.

R: Yeah, and when we talk to people who describe their own experiences often—they're talking about Grandma and Grandpa and whatnot coming back to them and telling them that it's all OK—you know, and they're very comforting messages –

E: Yeah, which is why –

S: They want a narrative.

E: Which is why they watch these shows. It reinforces these positions that these people have, you know, and they derive a certain, you know, need out of it.

J: I wonder, though, because those shows are ''so bad''! They're so bad. Can they really be, you know?

R: I mean, there's a lot of – No, no, no! Personally, I would derive a lot of happiness from knowing that my dearly beloved grandmother, who I adored when I was young—she died when I was young—I would get so much happiness knowing that she was just screwing around with asshole ghosthunters on TV. Just, like, brushing past them and then disappearing whenever the cameras come out you know? That would give me a lot of satisfaction, knowing that.

J: Well, maybe the skeptical version of it is watching a YouTube video of Hitchens just tearing some moron apart, right? That's our version of that?

E: That releases endorphins, yeah.

J: 'Cause that makes me believe in something, right?

E: Yeah.

J: It gives me a thrill, but – OK, anyways. So, there is an article we're talking about here. So, Dr. Paul Brewer, who is – teaches at the University of Deleware, developed a study that was recently published in the journal ''Science: Communication'' that examines the influence of the media on the public's perception of the paranormal. So, here is his test: He took four news articles that were similar to each other, but they had significant differences in some of the details. The essence of it was, he had an article on one end of the spectrum that described a paranormal effect with a paranormal investigator, and they were using instruments to measure things, or whatever. And, then, as you go down to the fourth article, the fourth article gets very descriptive about using, you know, faux scientific language to make the paranormal investigators sound scientifically-minded, and using scientific tools. And, what he found was, the more of the faux science that was in the article, the more that the people believed that the paranormal accounts were true. You know, it's kind of a kick in the gut for us skeptics, because—and for us scientists, because—they're using our lingo, and our vernacular, and the way that we go about presenting data, and they're fooling people with it—because, I think, the general public is trained to a certain degree to recognize scientific language and recognize the formality of science—and they're using that—and I don't know how deliberate it is. Maybe they figured it out for the TV shows, that, you know, "hey, the more we B.S. this, the more we make this meter look cool and we throw in, you know, technical jargon, the more people that are going to be interested in our TV show"—

B: I think they also believe it themselves, Jay. They think they're being scientific.

J: Yeah.

E: That's right, yeah.

B: That's a big part of it as well.

E: You bet they do.

J: So, Brewer said it wasn't just any story about paranormal investigators that made people believe in ghosts and haunted houses. It was a story about how they were scientific. So, he puts a big emphasis on the science there. And, the good news was that he said that they might look at this and say, "Well, all it takes is this sprinkle of some acronyms in there, and wave around a cool-looking thing that beeps, and suddenly people believe in ghosts and haunted houses." Now, the one cool thing about his research was, he also found that if, at the end of the article, there was a skeptical disclaimer that said "This is the skeptical perspective. This is why that investigation was wrong. This is the mistakes that they made and this is why these instruments are bogus."—if they threw that in there—it actually made the people believe in the claims a lot less.

R: What?

J: Yeah, it actually worked.

R: The thing that we're always complaining about—that, like, one sentence that presents –

S: The token skeptic?

E: The token skeptic, yeah.

R: – the entirety of skeptical opinion—that actually does make a difference?

J: Well, I don't want to – I don't want to say that the token skeptic 30-second B.S. blurb that they cut on most of the TV shows that we see works. The way that he presented it, it seemed a little bit like it had more teeth. It wasn't a quick thing. I think it was a little bit more of a takedown.

S: So, there was a series of studies about ten years ago, where they looked at the same thing—at the presentation of pseudoscience in a documentary and its effect on people's belief in the subject matter, like belief in UFOs or alien visitation—and they found some similar things in that, when it was presented scientifically, that absolutely increased belief. They also found that if, at any point in time, it was said—there was any kind of disclaimer saying—the following claims are true, or that the following claims may or may not be true, or whatever—anything positive or negative—reduced belief, or reduced the increase in belief, following the segment. So, anything that triggered people's questioning about, is it true or is it not true, was actually a good thing. But they found the opposite in that the token skepticism at the end—a scientist coming in at the end and saying, you know, "We've evaluated this, and it's not true", ''increased'' belief in the thing, because it lent legitimacy to the whole enterprise—the very fact that a scientist was spending their time and giving their attention to it.

J: Oh, yeah.

S: So –

B: Is that a cultural change –

S: Well, maybe –

B: – or is it the study?

S: Well, all right. I don't know. I don't know what the answer to that is. But, one possible interpretation may be that the ''token'' ineffective skepticism actually has a negative effect in raising belief in the paranormal because it's lending false legitimacy, but if you give ''effective'', you know, analysis—

B: Yeah.

S: —effective skeptical analysis—maybe you could reverse that and bring it back down.

J: Yeah, from from what the article said, it was, I think, an equal paragraph on the skeptical perspective –

S: Yes.

J: – and, specifically –

S: We really do have to argue for equal time and for getting the skeptical position –

J: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

S: – not the talking head blurb token skepticism may not – may still be counterproductive.

J: And the thing that he said was that there was that the article, the paragraph, did a takedown of the people that were claiming to be scientists.

S: Mm-hmm.

J: So, it stripped their expertise away, in essence.

S: Yeah. Yeah.

J: So, you know, I think it's interesting. I think that we're hard-wired for these things. I find, unfortunately, more and more TV programs—hey, you guys noticing, what's with the reality TV? Like, why is reality TV taking over television? Have you asked yourself that question?

S: 'Cause it's cheap.

E: It's cheap.

S: It's cheap, yeah.

(''applause'')

== Live Q&A (51:06) ==
* Questions from the CSICon audience

== Science or Fiction (55:19) ==

S: Item number one. A new study finds that astronauts who spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. Item number two. Scientists have discovered the first feathered dinosaur in the western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers. And item number three. Researchers find that, at the molecular level, evolutionary changes can be highly predictable.

== Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:08:11) ==
<blockquote>Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.</blockquote>
J: Paul Kurtz!

{{Outro1}}

== References ==
<references/>

{{Navigation}}

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-17T11:41:18Z

Cornelioid: /* Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44) */ proofread 2nd half

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|episodeDate = 3rd November 2012 
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|qowText = Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality. 
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|}}

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

RW: – a live edition of my favorite podcast and radio show. So, we're going to have Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Jay Novella, Even Bernstein, and – and a woman –

(''laughter'')

RW: – join us. It's the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe!

(''applause'')

S: Hello, and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

(''applause'')

S: Today is Thursday, October 25th, 2012, and we are live from [http://www.csiconference.org/ CSICon 2012].

(''applause'')

Joining me, as always, are Bob Novella –

B: Hey everybody!

(''cheers'')

S: – Rebecca Watson –

R: Hello, everyone!

(''cheers'')

''audience member'': I love you, Rebecca!

R: I love you, too!

S: – Jay Novella...Jay Novella –

J: Wooooo! Rebecca, yeah!

(''cheers'')

R: I love you, Jay!

S: – and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hello, Nashville!

(''cheers'')

S: So, how're you guys doing? How do you like Nashville?

J: It's awesome. I didn't – I thought people were going to literally be playing guitar when I got off the airplane.

B: Oh, come on, Jay.

S: Yeah, in the airport, you know?

J: Yeah.

== This Day in Skepticism (1:28) ==
November 3, 1957 Sputnik 2 launched

S: So, Rebecca, you always start us off with a This Day in Science and Skepticism. This show will be going up on November 3rd, so, did anything happen that day?

R: Nope.

(''laughter'')

B: Ever?

R: Oh, all right. One thing happened. One thing happened! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_2 Sputnik 2] happened.

S: ''Sputnik 2: The Revenge''.

(''laughter'')

R: ''Son of Sputnik''.

S: ''Son of Sputnik''.

J: ''Son of Sputnik''!

R: That's right. Sputnik 2 you might know as "the one that killed the puppy".

(''awwws'')

R: No? Aww, that's weird, 'cause I really thought that this would go over well at a live event! Yeah, Sputnik 2 is the craft that took Laika into orbit, Laika being the Soviet space dog who became the first animal in orbit—for about, like, 10 minutes, before she died.

E: Well, you know –

S: A couple of hours. It was a couple of hours. They thought he was going to survive for about ten days –

R: I think she's a "she".

S: – ''she'' was going to survive –

E: Eh.

R: Get it right, Steve!

S: You know, asexual Russian names, I mean, come on. But, they thought that Laika was going to survive for about ten days, but then they had a little mishap with the cooling system, and –

E: Oops.

S: Yeah. – got a little hot in the capsule—104 degrees, they said in (''inaudible'')

E: That'd be a hot dog. Yep.

(''groans'')

B: Oh, come on. My god.

E: Thank you. I'll be here all the weekend.

R: How – can we just take a moment, just to take a poll of the audience: How are our dead dog jokes doing? Good?

J: Yes!

(''applause'')

R: OK. All right. Yeah.

J: You know what? I didn't know until we researched this item that it was a one-way mission.

R: Yeah.

E: Mm-hmm.

J: That's really nasty.

S: Well, the capsule returned.

(''laughter'')

E: Yeah, well –

S: About 162 days later, it burned up in the atmosphere. But, yeah, they never intended to bring Laika back.

J: No, they actually were going to euthanize her with poison food after the tenth day, I think, right?

R: This is seriously the worst item ever. What was I thinking when I picked it?

S: There – there's Laika.

E: Aww. Aww.

R: Oh yeah! I didn't pick it! Steve forced me to!

E: But, we'd never know who this dog was if it didn't go on Sputnik 2, right? I mean, this would be an otherwise – another animal.

R: No, yeah, and I'm sure Laika appreciates the fame she gets from ''beyond the grave''.

E: She got her fifteen minutes.

== In Memorium ==
=== Paul Kurtz (3:45) ===
* 1925-2012

S: Well, we are going to start the new segment of the show with an ''in memoriam''. We do like to, on the ''Skeptic's Guide'', pause to remember those members of the skeptical community who have passed, and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] died several days ago, just the day before the organizers were coming down to the conference. He died on Sunday. He was 85 years old. It was 1925 to 2012, so that is 86. I can do math. (''audience laughter'') You'll know why i was confused in a moment.

R: 'Cause you're terrible at math?

S: Yes. So, before we get the show started, Ron Lindsay and Kendrick Frazier talked about Paul Kurtz. You know, he was one of the giants of the skeptical movement, of the skeptical community. You know, he was largely responsible for organizing the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, founding Prometheus Books, CFI, [http://www.secularhumanism.org/ Secular Humanism]. He was an academic, a philosopher. He really gave a lot of weight to the movement early on. He made it to that – he broke it to that next level. It wasn't that, you know, before he came on board. So he has to be remembered for that. We did have some interactions with Paul along the years. The first year that we started – (''audience cooing'')

R: Baby Steve!

E: Aww.

S: I was a little younger back then.

R: He's three years old there.

B: He's only half-grey there.

S: (''laughing'') I'm only half-grey!

E: A little less grey, yep.

S: You can mark my age by my greyness up until about ten years ago, when i went totally grey. Right when we got started, in 1996, you know, CSICOP, now CSI, you know, they were the big national skeptical organization. They'd definitely – They took us under their wing, you know, gave us their support, their local membership list, so that we could get our movement going. And i remember meeting Paul at the first World Skeptics Conference, and he was immediately—like, you know, your grandfather—like, you know, very, very comfortably took on that air of being a mentor. It's like, "Yeah, this is great. You're welcome to the skeptical movement." So i definitely remember him fondly in that way. A few years later, Paul organized a meeting of the local skeptical groups. In the picture here you can see me again with Bob, Perry, and Evan. The four of us came up together –

J: Now, if i remember correctly, Rebecca, you and i were off being badass somewhere else, right?

R: I think that's what was happening, yeah.

S: – and, i think, in the foreground, that's Colonel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Nickell Joe Nickell], isn't it?

E: Colonel.

S: Yeah, he had broke his leg in Spain, or something?

R: Round of applause for Colonel Joe Nickell!

E: I remember that.

(''applause'')

S: Joe actually is going to come up, and he's going to read a poem that he wrote, i believe, about Paul.

JN: Paul was a great supporter of the arts, and i hope he would have liked this. The poem is called "Book of Seasons: An elegy". (''Uncertain re: permission to reproduce poem'')

S: Thank you, Joe.

=== Leon Jaroff (7:34) ===
* 1926-2012

S: This same weekend, Saturday before the show, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_(magazine) Leon Jaroff] also died. ''He'' was 85, hence my confusion. So, Leon Jariff—not a big name in the skeptical community recently, and if you ask, you know, people at conventions like this if they knew who he was – I mean, in fact, right before the show Rebecca said to me, "Who's Leon Jaroff?"

R: (''indignant gasp'')

S: Sorry, Rebecca.

(''audience laughter'')

S: But he was perhaps one of the most skeptical journalists that we have had.

B: Yeah.

S: He was the science columnist for ''Time Magazine''. It was he who said, "You know, popularizing science is important, you know, we should start a science-dedicated magazine." And that was ''Discover Magazine''. That was him. He was not afraid to be a hard-nosed skeptic when writing about scientific issues. So, for example, when writing about chiropractors, [http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,213482,00.html he wrote],

<blockquote>
Chiropractors also employ a bewildering variety of weird practices to diagnose their patients. Some use applied kinesiology, a muscle test that supposedly can diagnose allergies and diseased organs. Hair analysis and iris readings are commonplace in the profession. Even sillier are many of the treatments that chiropractors use and recommend: homeopathic potions, colon irrigation, magnetic therapy, enzyme pills, colored-light therapy, and something called "balancing body energy," among other mystical procedures with undocumented effects.
</blockquote>

S: That's from a mainstream journalist writing in ''Time Magazine''. Do we see this kind of thing today? I don't think so.

B: Nope.

(''audience applause'')

S: So, you know, we do have to, I think, also note the support that Jaroff gave to such a good science journalism, and that kind of hard-nosed, skeptical science journalism is definitely something we miss. That's a void that, I think, that we in the skeptical community have to fill, but, unfortunately, it is a void.

== News Items ==
=== Big Bang Conference at CERN (9:31)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19870036 Big Bang and religion mixed in Cern debate]

S: Rebecca –

R: Yes!

S: – this is a different quote. It's not as good a quote.

<blockquote>
Science in isolation is great for producing stuff, but not so good for producing ideas.
</blockquote>

R: Mm-hmm.

S: Who said that?

R: That was said by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Pinsent Andrew Pinsent] at the Ramsey Center for Science and Religion. What I particularly liked about this quote is that it is completely reversed – it is the exact opposite of what I would have suggested.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I would say that science is actually really good at ideas, but, in order to produce stuff, you have to add something else. You know, like, they might be able to figure out lasers, but to make a CD player you need a marketing executive.

S: Or death ray.

R: Thank you. Yeah, of course. Why didn't I go there first?

(''laughter'')

R: Yeah, so, this quote comes from a recent article that the BBC produced: "Big Bang and religion mixed in CERN debates". Apparently, there was a conference recently that CERN held—you remember CERN, you know, the guys who, apparently, may have found –

J: Higgs!

R: – the Higgs boson.

S: A boson with Higgs-like properties.

R: A Higgs-like thing.

S: Boson, yeah.

R: A Higgish. I like "Higgish" –

B: "Higgish"?

R: – a little bit.

J: (''laughing'') "A little bit!"

S: "Higgy"?

B: (''singing, inaudible'') ''Higgy again."

R: So, yes. Apparently, I don't know the purpose – I don't know what, who dreamt this up, but what I'm thinking is that someone was concerned that they may have found a particle that many people know as the "God particle", and, so, they're concerned that they're going to be excommunicated or, you know, that people will rebel—religious people will rebel—against science. Basically, we'll have some sort of Dark Ages–esque thing happening, and, so, maybe somebody at CERN thought, "Well, we should have this conference where we talk about how religious people should be OK with the Higgs boson."

B: Mm-hmm.

R: So, those are the good intentions that I'm assuming are behind this conference that has speakers such as this. The quotes in here are pretty fun, and none of them have any amount of intelligence to them. Steve, you're the one who brought this one to my attention here –

S: Yes.

R: I'm interested in what – we've talked a little bit before about things like the Templeton Foundation, which is an organization that gives out a prize – gives out prizes to people who can explore science in a religious context, basically. And I'm a bit opposed to it. I feel like it's muddying the waters. I think we don't ''need'' to bring religion into what people are doing at CERN.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I think those two things are happily separated, but I'm interested in knowing your feelings on this.

S: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think trying to introduce theology into science is misguided. You know, this conference was specifically about the origin of the universe. So, it's not just about scientific issues in particular. I think the thinking, at least on the part of the theologians who were quoted about this conference, is that, well, you're talking about the origin of the universe. That's a really big question, and religion is about answering the really big questions—not science. Science is narrow and reductionist, and makes stuff, but can't really grapple with the big questions of our origins. And that's exactly incorrect, as you were saying. That's a complete knock to science. I mean, science is, in fact, the only human intellectual endeavor that ''can'' answer any empirical question about the origin of the universe.

R: Yeah.

J: So, was the conference, though, the scientists trying to appease religious people? The saying that –

R: Well, you know, apparently, this was – the conference was done on the part of CERN, according to BBC, and that's what I find troubling. I'm totally OK with a conference that religious people host, you know, and the topic might be "How do we –" you know, "How do we consider our theology now that we know ''X'', ''Y'', and ''Z''—now that science has discovered this? What does that mean for ''our'' belief system?" And I think that's fine, but, you know, apparently, the theologians who were there seem to think that this was a chance to ''debate'' the scientists –

J: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

R: – and, no! Why would you do that? Debate is completely the opposite direction of where you want to go.

S: It also – I mean, the quotes seem to me like a desperate grasp at relevance, trying to make it seem like they're – you know, that theology is still relevant to questions about origins of the universe, when, in fact, science has completely displaced it from that endeavor.

J: So, did it end up with, like, a fistfight? Like, what happened?

(''laughter'')

E: Science won.

R: I haven't found any evidence of any arrests, so, apparently –

S: There were no fisticuffs?

J: That really must've been awkward as hell, though, right? Like, they're like, sitting there, like, after a whole day, and they're like, "Uh, OK, it's over now."

E: Something tells me they're not going to be doing this again. They're going to learn from this.

S: I don't know.

R: Well, I mean, it's actually not even – like, I wish it had been that exciting. But, instead, it just seems like it was really ''boring'' –

E: Yeah.

R: – and nobody came to ''any'' conclusions. Because you ''can't'', you know?

S: Yeah.

R: You're just having a discussion of, like, well, you know, "But what don't we know?"

=== Italian Earthquake Scientists Convicted (14:57)===
* [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/22/us-italy-earthquake-court-idUSBRE89L13V20121022 Italian scientists convicted over earthquake warning]

S: Now, we're trying to keep – we like to keep our live shows really light –

(''laughter'')

E: So far, so good.

S: So, we thought we'd talk about a horrible earthquake that killed over three hundred people.

E: Yeah, let's go there.

R: Good intro. Good intro there.

S: But there's actually a better story embedded in that. There were six Italian scientists, who were recently convicted of manslaughter –

B: Yeah.

S: – for failure to properly communicate the warnings about the upcoming L'Aquila earthquake in 2009. Yeah, we've been following this story, you know, since it happened. The quick version is that there were a number of small tremors in this very earthquake-prone part of Italy, and the geologists—the local geologists—you know, were following it. And their opinion was that, well, these tremors are very common. Most such tremors are not followed by major quakes. Most major quakes are not preceded by these kinds of tremors. So, the probability of a major quake occurring is not particularly higher, you know, now, just because of these tremors, than at any time, and, therefore, there's no cause for alarm. Now, they were specifically asked during a press conference, "Should we panic?" You know, "Should we evacuate?" And they said "No. There's no reason to evacuate. Stay at home and drink a glass of wine."

B: Steve, was this about a year ago that we covered this?

S: 2009. 2009 –

B: Oh, wow. (''inaudible'')

S: – so, was the quake, and then the court trial started about a year ago, and now the decision came down that the six scientists were convicted to six years – I think six years in prison and something like, you know, millions of dollars in damages for manslaughter—for the deaths of the people who didn't evacuate because they – of their reassurances that there was nothing to be worried about.

R: That's horrific.

J: Well, i, you know, to play devil's advocate real quick, if there was true negligence—like, if they didn't follow through with things that they needed to do, if they did a terrible job at analyzing the data, in a fashion that – where the data could have been analyzed better, or they actually weren't asking their peers for the information—i can understand if there was extreme negligence.

S: Right.

J: But, even still, like, that's very hard to prove, and I just don't understand –

S: Well, I mean, not really. The question is, was their opinion within the standard for their profession? That's—in my opinion—that's the only real question here. You can't be blamed for being wrong, right? You can't be blamed for a bad outcome if you were following the standard. Now, of course, scientists can't predict earthquakes. You can't predict when an earthquake is going to occur. That's the bottom line. What – every statement they said was truthful, you know, every factual statement. "These tremors do not necessarily mean that there's an earthquake coming, and they are not a reason to evacuate. We don't evacuate every city where there's tremors because there might be a major quake, because it's not that predictive." So, that was not negligent. No, and they weren't really being accused of negligence. They were basically being accused of poorly communicating to the public. It seems to be based on a lot of false premises about what scientists ''can know''—what an expert about, you know, an earthquake, a geologist, expert ''can know''.

R: Yeah, they've been convicted for not using a magical power they don't have.

S: Yeah.

R: They might as well have convicted all the psychics in Italy for not accurately predicting this earthquake.

J: I think we need to be careful—i don't disagree, of course. I don't think that these men should be going to jail for this at all—but it is an important thing to state that, I think, people should go to prison, or get in trouble ''legally'', if they are misrepresenting science or – right? So you see where I'm going with this.

S: Well, yeah. If you are –

J: If you're setting that premise—you're saying, "Hey, these guys screwed up, they didn't do what they were supposed to do, they didn't communicate to us the real possible outcomes here", whatever—and, like –

S: Yeah.

J: – I'll reiterate, I don't think that they should be going to jail—

B: Well, I don't agree –

J: —but, I do think, though, that that standard that that court set needs to be applied all the way down the ladder.

B: Yeah, but, Jay, like, someone saying that "I have a cure for cancer and it's scientifically proven" but it's a sham?

J: Exactly, right? So, if they're going to actually take those scientists out and say "You're done. You're not performing science anymore and you're going to jail for that bad decision or information you gave", well, hello! Then, you know, all of a sudden, a million lawsuits need to be filed.

S: But, it wasn't – to clarify, though, it wasn't ''bad'', it was just ''unlucky''. I mean, doctors encounter this all the time, you know. You are asked to decide, you know, what tests to order, what diagnoses a patient might have. There's a whole lot of liability involved with that. You can't be convicted of malpractice just because of a bad outcome if what you did was within the standard of care.

B: Right.

S: So, was the information they were giving to the public within the standard for the profession? If the answer is "yes", the fact that there was a low-probability earthquake the next week is not their fault.

E: Right.

S: It doesn't change the fact – you know, if they're saying there's a 99% chance that there's not going to be an earthquake, and then the 1% thing happens, they were still right –

J: Yeah.

S: – in saying that it was unlikely.

R: Yeah.

E: Didn't the evidence show, basically, that they performed correctly, essentially? They did not –

S: That's the consensus. I mean, so, there's worldwide outrage, especially among the scientific community (''inaudible'') –

B: This has got to be shot down in a higher court.

S: Yeah.

B: This can't – can't possibly stand.

E: I hope so.

S: Well, there's two appeals left. There's two appeals, and they will stay out of prison before those appeals. So, the United States National Academy of Science, the Royal Academy of Science—the Royal Society, rather—issued a joint statement saying that "that is why we must protest the verdict in Italy. If it becomes a precedent in law, it could lead to a situation in which scientists will be afraid to give expert opinion."

J: Yeah, that's devastating.

E: Mm-hmm.

S: So, it would have a chilling effect. What – you know, what geologist is going to, you know, talk to the public in Italy now, if you could wind up in jail and, you know, financially devastated, and your career devastated, because you can't predict the future, you know, because you don't have a crystal ball? It's insane. It's insane.

J: Yeah. To think that they're going after these scientists, and they're not going after the rampant quackery throughout –

S: Well, there's that, too.

E: I wonder how much pressure they came under from, like, the families, the survivors, of this terrible, terrible devastation –

J: Oh yeah, they had to hang someone.

E: – and I imagine they put a lot of pressure on politicians and other people in order to hold ''somebody'' accountable.

J: They have to. They had to send someone down the river for that.

B: Did they have a trial?

S: Yeah.

B: Did they have witnesses and experts coming in?

S: Yeah. Yep.

B: I'd love to know the details of what exactly happened, because how could –

(''laughter'')

S: So, we'll see if the worldwide backlash has an effect. I mean, again, they do have two appeals left, so we'll definitely follow it.

=== Whale Makes Human Sounds (21:35)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20026938 Beluga whale 'makes human-like sounds']

S: All right, Rebecca, so, we have a cute animal –

R: Thank you.

S: – we're going to talk about now.

J: This is a happy one!

R: Just tell me this narwhal or whatever is alive.

S: It's a whale.

E: It's alive and well.

S: It's a beluga whale.

B: It sort of looks like a narwhal.

R: Tell me this beluga is alive!

E: That's NOC the beluga. They're very much alive.

R: It's not a beluga?

E: "NOC". N-O-C.

S: "NOC". NOC the beluga.

R: Oh! "That's NOC."

(''laughter'')

R: I was about to say, "No, ''that is a beluga''."

S: Sounds like a children's song.

E: It does sound like a children's –

S: Evan, sing it.

E: No.

S: OK.

J: Don't change it! Please don't –

E: If my daughter was here, maybe. But, no. So, what's important about NOC the beluga? Well, OK, so, picture this: You are part of the National Marine Mammal Foundation, OK, and you're in the tank, swimming around with the whales and stuff, and, all of a sudden, you hear somebody—you hear a voice—call your name. Something to the effect that – "Get out of the water! Get out of the water!" So, you're in the tank and you come up and you say, "OK, who told me to get out of the water? Who told me to get out of the water?" And the other scientists and people are looking around you like, "Nobody? What the heck are you talking about?" And, he's like, "Well, I definitely ''heard'' that!" Well, what did he actually hear? Well, apparently, NOC the beluga made some noises very reminiscent of human noises. Beluga whales are, you know, incredible creatures. Their calls – They're known as the canaries of the sea. They have a very high-frequency, high-pitched tone to their noises that they make, but they make lots of different kinds of noises. They can emit up to eleven different kinds of sounds—crackles, whistles, trills, squawks—all sorts of things. But, it's been rumored that these whales can emit noises that sound like humans talking. And, for the first time, they've actually recorded NOC the whale making these noises, and they have it on tape. And we have it on tape.

R: Nah.

(''NOC makes unnervingly human-sounding noises'')

R: Did he maybe just swallow a kazoo?

(''laughter'')

J: Everybody has a drunk neighbor that makes those noises.

(''laughter'')

E: Oh, gosh. Who knows what the heck he was saying? You know, dolphins have been taught to mimic noises that kind of sound like human voices, but, before this, there's been no record of an animal ''spontaneously'' coming up and making these kinds of noises. This is the first evidence, the first hard evidence we have of it.

R: Here's – I have a theory. I have a theory. I have a theory that – so, whales, in general, are incredibly intelligent –

E: Oh yeah.

R: – possibly as smart as us, but they don't want thumbs, or any way to talk to us –

E: Or fire.

R: – and I feel like they do, basically – That's true. No, I saw Spongebob once. There was fire under the sea. I think it can be done.

S: Yep, but they don't have nanotechnology, though.

R: They don't. So, my theory is that whales are basically, like – they have – it's like they have locked-in syndrome, you know? Where they're just –

J: Oh, no.

R: – super-intelligent, and there's all these people around them, and they're just messing with them –

J: So, he was screaming, actually –

R: Yeah! And, so, he's been like, his whole life, he's been in this stupid little – like, he's in captivity, right? So, he's been in this stupid little aquarium, and he's just, like, "I hate all of you! And I'm going to will myself to tell you, because you're too stupid to understand!"

E: So, basically, what's going on here is, the whale has learned to change – rapidly change pressure within its naval cavity in order to create these sounds. And, it hasn't – the whale is able to over-inflate what's known as its vestibular sac in its blowhole, which is normally acts to stop water from basically coming in. So, the whale is going through a lot of, you know, effort, essentially, to try to make these noises. And I'm sure they're going to be trying to figure out exactly, you know, basically, ''why'' is the whale doing this?

S: Well, he just – this whale was – did spend his life in captivity –

E: Yeah.

S: – so, he did hear human speech a lot, and maybe he's just, to some extent, mimicking the sounds that he grew up hearing his whole life.

J: It's definitely – it definitely has a human sound to it, in the cadence and everything.

S: Yeah.

J: I mean, he's intelligent enough to mimic a human, which is really cool.

R: Yeah.

J: And, then, you always think, you know, if he can mimic a human—if his brain is advanced that much—you know, maybe he –

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But, is he mimicking humans or making fun of humans? You know, like people make fun of other languages?

R: Yeah, he's just like "Weh! Weh! Weh! This is what you sound like!"

E: Yeah. You stupid bald monkey and (''inaudible'')! Get out of here!

B: Sounds like a false dichotomy.

=== PANDAS Controversy (26:18)===
* [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/a-pandas-story/ A PANDAS Story]

S: So, we're going to talk about – going from talking about beluga whales to talking about PANDAS! Except, we're not talking about pandas, because we're talking about –

E: Wait.

R: Stop toying with my emotions, Steve!

S: I had to put a cute picture of a panda up there for you, Rebecca. We are talking about pediatric autoimmune –

R: It makes sense.

S: – neuropsychiatric disorder associated with –

E: I didn't know PANDA was an acronym. Cool!

R: Steve, I miss the panda.

S: – streptococcal infection—or, PANDAS. See? There's a panda.

(''laughter, cooing'')

E: Aww!

R: Yay.

S: We're talking about PANDAS –

E: Aww.

R: Boo.

J: Oh.

E: That's worse.

S: – which is a legitimately controversial medical diagnosis! So, essentially, what happens is, children suddenly develop ticks—like Tourette syndrome—and psychiatric disorders—obsessive–compulsive disorder—and it is thought that, in some cases, that it is actually – the inciting event is an infection—bacteria—streptococcal infection. Now, of course, it's always difficult to establish the reality of a new disease. Unless you get all your ducks in a row, and all the, you know, pathology all adds up, it's sometimes difficult to identify a legitimate new syndrome and to prove that – cause and effect. So, correlation is one thing. As we know, correlation is not ''necessarily'' causation. And, so, the syndrome exists. There are – the number of physicians who have identified the sudden onset psychiatric – neuropsychiatric disorder, and in some cases it is temporally associated with a streptococcal infection. But that's not the same thing as saying that the strep infection ''caused'' the neuropsychiatric syndrome. So, that's – and there's the controversy. Now, of course, we live in the modern Internet age. So, as soon as a scientist says, "I think that there's this syndrome—I want to call it PANDAS—and – sort of, you know, a psychiatric syndrome provoked by a bacterial infection", of course, there are now support groups, and there's groups on the Internet, and there's patient groups supporting this diagnosis before the science is even settled. And, then, of course, once that happens, when you try to do more science, or have any kind of discussion about whether or not this is a real syndrome, you have parents and patient groups and advocacy groups, you know, calling you all kinds of nasty names and saying there's a conspiracy against people with PANDAS, it's all the insurance companies and Big Pharma and evil doctors or whatever. So, that's the situation that we're in the middle of right now, unfortunately, is that, before the science is settled, you know, there's the scientific controversy, then there's the public controversy. This came to the media attention recently because of a 16-year-old girl called Elizabeth Wray. She developed, you know, a syndrome like PANDAS with ticks and psychological disorders, was diagnosed by a physician with PANDAS, and then was transferred to Boston's Children's Hospital for – presumably for further treatment of PANDAS. Now, the story that is going around the PANDAS community is that once she got to Boston University—or Boston Children's Hospital—she was told – the parents were told, "We don't believe that PANDAS is real – that it exists", and then they essentially admitted their daughter to the psychiatric unit and started treating her with psychiatric medications. Now, I don't know if that's true, because the doctors and the hospital are not telling their side of the story because of patient confidentiality. So, we don't know what their side of the story is. We only know the parents' side of the story, filtered through the PANDAS community. Unfortunately, now there's – this story has taken on a life of its own. There's a Free Elizabeth Wray movement going on within the PANDAS community, they're telling all kinds of horror stories about Boston Children's Hospital, and, you know, we can't verify any of it. What's interesting in reading about it is that each side has their narrative—and I wrote about this on Science-Based Medicine—because one of the things that – the ideas that we're wrestling with in the skeptical community is that—well, all right, we have, I think, a good approach to critical thinking, we understand a lot about self-deception, about the nature of science and pseudoscience—but we don't always have a good story to tell the public, or we have a hard time convincing mainstream outlets that we have – that our story is an interesting and good one. You know, we have to really market our narrative—the skeptical narrative. When you read about stories like this, the PANDAS proponents have a really compelling emotional narrative. It may be total B.S.—i don't know—but it's very compelling. They have a story of a child suffering from an unusual disease, parents who just want to do what's right for her—I believe all those things are correct—and then they are, essentially, being abused by a dismissive and skeptical medical establishment who doesn't believe in this disease, and that is treating their child with perhaps harmful, you know, psychiatric medications. They even – this went to court. Apparently, the hospital thought that the parents were being negligent in not allowing them to give proper standard of care—psychiatric treatment—to their child, and they wanted to have custody taken away from the parents, and they wanted to admit Elizabeth to a locked psychiatric ward—again, not sure – I can't verify those from the hospital's side of things. A judge – a Massachusetts judge essentially made her a ward of the state while they sorted out what was going on, but they did not grant the hospital their request to treat her in the way that they wanted to. So, they essentially just – the state took her out of everybody's hands for a moment – for the moment. So, it's interesting. Of course, the PANDAS community, again, is up in arms, you know. The court essentially took custody away from these parents that are only trying to do what's right for their daughter. But, of course, you could see the other narrative—you know, let's assume that the physicians think that—even if you think – whether or not you think PANDAS really exists—they think that she has a psychiatric illness, the parents are in denial, they're pursuing this false diagnosis, and they're, you know, refusing standard medical care. That's a story, too.

B: What if you just pulled out the whole strep association, and just treat it like a "pandisorder"? Is their beef that it's associated with strep, and they don't think there's any association? Why don't they just treat it like a neuropsychiatric disorder –

S: Yeah.

B: – and forget about the whole strep association?

S: Well, because the strep association would lead you to treat with things like antibiotics. So, that's the question: Should you treat it with antibiotics, or should you treat her like a psychiatric (''inaudible'') patient?

J: Why not both? I mean, why wouldn't you –

S: Well, she has had at least one round of antibiotics. You can also treat it like an autoimmune disease, with, like, intravenous globulin, for example. So, I mean, these are real medical questions. Do we treat it like an infection, do we treat it like a post-infectious auto-immune disease, or do we treat it like a psychiatric disorder? Those are real questions.

J: Steve, are you saying pandas don't exist? Let me just get this straight.

(''laughter'')

S: So, well, I did – to give a serious answer to your sarcastic question, I did –

R: My favorite kind.

S: – take the opportunity – I'm good that way. I'm good that way. I did take the opportunity just to familiarize myself with the PANDAS literature—again, I always emphasize, I'm no an expert in this, but I can read the literature and give my opinion like a science journalist—i think it's genuinely controversial. When I read the research, there's lots of – the ducks are not in a row. So, when you do things like treat kids who apparently have PANDAS with antibiotics in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, they don't necessarily improve. And, if you look for the antibodies that are supposed to be there, they don't necessarily correlate with the disease onset or with the existence of strep. So –

B: So, this is clearly not like autism and vaccines. It's just more complicated than that.

S: So, no. So, right. So, autism and vaccines, like, I would say, that's been studied enough to say that autism's – that autism is not caused by vaccines. We can say that. We can make the negative statement. I cannot make the negative statement that PANDAS does not exist, only that the research so far has not reached the threshold where we can agree that it does exist and that there is some actual negative data—there's some positive data, too—so it's legitimately controversial. It did remind me, though, of the chronic Lyme disease controversy—

R: Yeah.

S: —which is very common in New England—again, where they think that a number of symptoms, including neurological symptoms, can be caused by a bacterial infection and treated with antibiotics. And the same – there's a lot of overlap in those two communities, you know.

J: Steve, are you saying that the public has unrealistic expectations?

S: Well, I think – it's partly that. I mean, I think the public is uncomfortable with the uncertainty, and they like this sort of hero–villain narrative, so they paint the medical community as the villains, and—except for those maverick physicians who understand. They're Lyme-literate, or they understand PANDAS, so they're the heroes—and, then, the insurance companies don't want to pay for, you know, over-and-over recurrent courses of IV antibiotics, so they're the villains, you know. They're not—I'm not defending insurance companies, but sometimes they actually – sometimes they're right. They don't want to pay for things that are not science-based or evidence-based. So, it's complicated. And, you know, how do we – so, how do we deal with a child with this disorder when we don't know what the best scientific answer is—we don't know if it's autoimmune, infectious, or psychiatric? We just have to, you know, do the best we can—and there may be different physicians who would take different approaches—but to portray it as "PANDAS definitely exists. If you don't believe in it, you're dismissive and you're mean and evil, or you're protecting some kind of Big Pharma grant that you're getting"—they always bring that up—rather than saying, "You know, we really want to know the right answer, but we just haven't found it yet. It's still – it's legitimately controversial."

J: Yeah, I think what you're saying does confirm what I was thinking, is that the public wants an answer, science is not yet done figuring this one out, and –

S: Yeah. Like the earthquake one, right?

J: Yeah.

S: Sometimes the answer is, "We don't know yet", you know. "We need to do more research". In medicine, we have to make decisions with imperfect, you know, information, so, you know.

J: Wouldn't it be typical, too – like, let's say that this is happening over and over again –

S: Yeah.

J: – like, at some point, some doctors are going to come up with different ideas, they're going to try it out, you know. The trial-and-error process happens, and—i hate to say it, but—this girl is probably going to be one of the people that gets tested on with new ideas.

S: Well, I mean – well, if you're really testing then you should be doing a research protocol. If you're just applying the best knowledge that we have to an individual patient, that's – a certain amount of trial and error with that that's not really experimentation. So, there is a difference there. So, I don't know. The other interesting question that I'm kind of alluding to is, what role do the patient or the advocacy groups play? I think, a lot of times, that they are helpful in raising awareness for a disease or a disorder and raising funding, and advocating for patients. You know, I've seen, I think, there's a lot of very effective, very good patient advocacy groups out there. But, sometimes, they put their nickel down on a specific scientific answer, and that's not their job.

J: Yeah.

S: It's not their job to predict or demand that science give them the answer they want. And, you know, unfortunately, some people want the answer to be "an infection"—not "genes", not, you know, "We don't know".

J: Yeah. It's curable. That's the one they want.

S: Of course, who – that's the answer I would want to have! "It's something outside that is, you know, foreign, that can be cured, and that can reverse my child to the way that they were". Who – every parent wants that to be the answer, but sometimes you – you know, you have to step back from what you want and listen to the evidence. That's the – that's the scientist's, that's the physician's job, you know. You should just let them do their job, you know.

J: All right, so, I want to bring up a quick side point on this.

S: Yeah.

J: So, as an example, let's say, fifty years ago, let's say this was happening. What stance do you think the public would have differently than what we're seeing today?

S: It's the same, and this ''did'' happen fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, you know, she would be diagnosed with neurosyphilis—maybe not somebody who was sixteen, but that was the stand-in for what we now would, you know, the same subculture would diagnose with chronic Lyme. There were believers in that. There were physicians who believed in treatments like chelation therapy, you know, and science proved it wrong, and they said, "Well, we don't care, we're going to still do it. We're going to come up with – We're just going to keep coming up with special pleading and alternate theories, and form our own societies and our own – and just keep doing it, and say that it's all a conspiracy."

J: Mm-hmm.

S: So, but, I think that it's just the turnaround time is so much faster because of the Internet. Like, another example: CCSVI, right? The alleged blockage in the veins that drained blood from the brain, causing multiple sclerosis. It's that – that whole process—of Dr. Zamboni proposing this entity and a treatment, to it being researched, to it being refuted, to, you know, patient advocacy groups springing up and calling for conspiracies and calling for research and demanding that science give them the answer that they want—all has taken place within a few years. We've seen that cycle happen right before our eyes. So, the Internet is just making it happen a lot quicker and a lot bigger, I think. But it's always been this way.

J: So do you have any ideas on what we could do? Could the skeptical community do anything to help this (''inaudible'')?

S: Well, I think what we do is, we discuss the issue from a science, logical, critical thinking point of view, you know. We point out the role of science in this, and we, I think, we try to bring the public discourse to a level that can deal with it in a more productive way, rather than the conspiracy mongering, sort of lowest-common-denominator that it would otherwise sink to.

J: Yeah.

=== Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44)===
* pnd

{{transcribing
|transcriber = Cornelioid
}}

S: Well, let's move on. Jay, we're talking about how the media presents stories about paranormal activities.

J: Yeah, this is interesting. So, a professor decided to—Professor Brewer decided that—because what we're seeing over the years is a very obvious interest, in the general public, to news articles, and to TV shows, that talk about ghosts—and, you know, we've all seen the ''Ghost Hunter'' TV show—and, to people like us, at best, we watch it, and it's fun, right? 'Cause it's ridiculous and entertaining, and we like to see people from our perspective—a skeptical perspective—they're acting foolishly. But, there are a lot of people that are watching this, and they're riveted. Like, they really love it and they think a lot of it's real—and, I'm sure, to a certain degree, I can't say everyone that watches it and thinks everything about it is real—but, in the end, there's a huge entertainment factor there, and, unfortunately, to us skeptics, we feel like there's a lot of people that simply believe it, and that's their favorite entertainment. And I know a lot of people—I'm friends with a lot of people—that literally have active discussions on Facebook all the time, that I dip into, that are talking about the latest TAPS show. It would be be, "Can you believe it?" and "I knew that place was haunted!", and they're like, you know, getting whooped up.

S: I don't get it. I just don't get it. Nothing happens!

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

R: That's not true! That's not true.

E: Like "Seinfeld", yeah.

S: But, I mean, but they never find a ghost.

R: Steve, Steve. Did you feel that?

(''laughter'')

R: That happens! That happens all the time.

(''applause'')

R: They feel so much.

J: The thing is, you know –

S: I want to see a [http://www.hark.com/clips/pnzwffccqk-10-people-witnessed-a-free-floating-full-torso-vaporous-apparition full, floating torso] drift across the camera lens. Then I'll be impressed.

B: I still won't believe it. (''inaudible'')

S: No, but at least it'll be entertaining.

J: A lot of the shows, though, they're all right on the cusp, you know, of the noise, right? They're always right on that cusp. They're always ''just'' seeing something, or something falls over, you know? Or there's a noise from upstairs, or whatever, and it's never – they never give you that, you know? You don't get that –

R: This, actually – this came up—tomorrow I'll be talking about the [http://paranormalroadtrip.org/ paranormal road trip] that I just went on with [http://www.jonronson.com/ Jon Ronson] and [http://richardwiseman.wordpress.com/ Richard Wiseman] that got us here—and, at one of the stops, we were at a – we did talk to someone in a "haunted museum", and she was telling us that "the ghost hunters were there, and it was very exciting because there was a noise in the attic, and there were steps (''step sounds'') even though nobody was up there, and so the ghost hunter ran over and climbed up the ladder and looked into the attic, and, just then, a lady, dressed all in white, came ''flying at him'', and he shrieked in horror and fell down the ladder, and it was all really dramatic", and we were just completely blown away, obviously. We were riveted –

E: Yeah, well.

R: – and we said, "We cannot ''wait'' to see that footage!"

(''groans'')

R: – and she said, "Actually, I mean, it was so good, they didn't actually get that on camera.

B: Darn it!

R: No, all the cameras were down in another room somewhere."

J: Yeah, of course.

E: Well.

S: That was like –

R: "There's literally no evidence of it", though. Yeah.

S: – Ed Warren. We were investigating Ed Warren. He told us this story of being in a haunted house, and they had a local news crew over there, and, like, for two hours, they videotaped things flying around the room, you know, like, I say, really impressive, you know, smoking-gun evidence of paranormal activity. We're like, "Great! Can we see that footage?"

E: Sure!

J: "Yeah!"

S: "You know what? They taped over it for the news segment later that night."

(''laughter'')

S: Go figure. Stupid news crew.

J: So, I – I'm going to ask a couple of questions that I want you guys to not answer right now, but just think about it, 'cause these are pretty obvious questions, but I think they're interesting. "Why do people believe, or like to believe, in the paranormal? What's the attraction?" It's an interesting question if you think about it. There are people that ''really'' seek it out and love it. And there's something exciting about it. There's something kind of visceral about it. To my mind—to a skeptical mind—I don't have a connection to it. I just don't see what that allure is, other than, maybe—because I do like horror movies, and I do like to get scared. I love being actually scared sitting in a movie theater. It doesn't happen that often, but when it does happen it's very thrilling—and, maybe they're just having a lot of those thrilling moments. It's easier for them to get scared.

R: But, also, I mean, don't you think, maybe, it's got something to do with the fact that, maybe, we're not going to rot in the ground and die and never see our loved ones again...? Maybe?

J: Maybe? It's – you know, I'm not going to say no, but when I think about it, there's something thrilling about it. I'm not thinking, as I'm being thrilled in a horror movie, "Oh, I'm defying death by being thrilled right now!" That's not happening. I'm just – there is something – it's like, you know, eating something really spicy that hurts.

S: Yeah, but to –

J: It hurts, but it's good at the same time, right?

E: Uh.

S: To a lot of people, definitely, you know, evidence of ghosts is evidence of the afterlife. That's the appeal.

R: Yeah, and when we talk to people who describe their own experiences often—they're talking about Grandma and Grandpa and whatnot coming back to them and telling them that it's all OK—you know, and they're very comforting messages –

E: Yeah, which is why –

S: They want a narrative.

E: Which is why they watch these shows. It reinforces these positions that these people have, you know, and they derive a certain, you know, need out of it.

J: I wonder, though, because those shows are ''so bad''! They're so bad. Can they really be, you know?

R: I mean, there's a lot of – No, no, no! Personally, I would derive a lot of happiness from knowing that my dearly beloved grandmother, who I adored when I was young—she died when I was young—I would get so much happiness knowing that she was just screwing around with asshole ghosthunters on TV. Just, like, brushing past them and then disappearing whenever the cameras come out you know? That would give me a lot of satisfaction, knowing that.

J: Well, maybe the skeptical version of it is watching a YouTube video of Hitchens just tearing some moron apart, right? That's our version of that?

E: That releases endorphins, yeah.

J: 'Cause that makes me believe in something, right?

E: Yeah.

J: It gives me a thrill, but – OK, anyways. So, there is an article we're talking about here. So, Dr. Paul Brewer, who is – teaches at the University of Deleware, developed a study that was recently published in the journal ''Science: Communication'' that examines the influence of the media on the public's perception of the paranormal. So, here is his test: He took four news articles that were similar to each other, but they had significant differences in some of the details. The essence of it was, he had an article on one end of the spectrum that described a paranormal effect with a paranormal investigator, and they were using instruments to measure things, or whatever. And, then, as you go down to the fourth article, the fourth article gets very descriptive about using, you know, faux scientific language to make the paranormal investigators sound scientifically-minded, and using scientific tools. And, what he found was, the more of the faux science that was in the article, the more that the people believed that the paranormal accounts were true. You know, it's kind of a kick in the gut for us skeptics, because—and for us scientists, because—they're using our lingo, and our vernacular, and the way that we go about presenting data, and they're fooling people with it—because, I think, the general public is trained to a certain degree to recognize scientific language and recognize the formality of science—and they're using that—and I don't know how deliberate it is. Maybe they figured it out for the TV shows, that, you know, "hey, the more we B.S. this, the more we make this meter look cool and we throw in, you know, technical jargon, the more people that are going to be interested in our TV show"—

B: I think they also believe it themselves, Jay. They think they're being scientific.

J: Yeah.

E: That's right, yeah.

B: That's a big part of it as well.

E: You bet they do.

J: So, Brewer said it wasn't just any story about paranormal investigators that made people believe in ghosts and haunted houses. It was a story about how they were scientific. So, he puts a big emphasis on the science there. And, the good news was that he said that they might look at this and say, "Well, all it takes is this sprinkle of some acronyms in there, and wave around a cool-looking thing that beeps, and suddenly people believe in ghosts and haunted houses." Now, the one cool thing about his research was, he also found that if, at the end of the article, there was a skeptical disclaimer that said "This is the skeptical perspective. This is why that investigation was wrong. This is the mistakes that they made and this is why these instruments are bogus."—if they threw that in there—it actually made the people believe in the claims a lot less.

R: What?

J: Yeah, it actually worked.

R: The thing that we're always complaining about—that, like, one sentence that presents –

S: The token skeptic?

E: The token skeptic, yeah.

R: – the entirety of skeptical opinion—that actually does make a difference?

J: Well, I don't want to – I don't want to say that the token skeptic 30-second B.S. blurb that they cut on most of the TV shows that we see works. The way that he presented it, it seemed a little bit like it had more teeth. It wasn't a quick thing. I think it was a little bit more of a takedown.

S: So, there was a series of studies about ten years ago, where they looked at the same thing—at the presentation of pseudoscience in a documentary and its effect on people's belief in the subject matter, like belief in UFOs or alien visitation—and they found some similar things in that, when it was presented scientifically, that absolutely increased belief. They also found that if, at any point in time, it was said—there was any kind of disclaimer saying—the following claims are true, or that the following claims may or may not be true, or whatever—anything positive or negative—reduced belief, or reduced the increase in belief, following the segment. So, anything that triggered people's questioning about, is it true or is it not true, was actually a good thing. But they found the opposite in that the token skepticism at the end—a scientist coming in at the end and saying, you know, "We've evaluated this, and it's not true", ''increased'' belief in the thing, because it lent legitimacy to the whole enterprise—the very fact that a scientist was spending their time and giving their attention to it.

J: Oh, yeah.

S: So –

B: Is that a cultural change –

S: Well, maybe –

B: – or is it the study?

S: Well, all right. I don't know. I don't know what the answer to that is. But, one possible interpretation may be that the ''token'' ineffective skepticism actually has a negative effect in raising belief in the paranormal because it's lending false legitimacy, but if you give ''effective'', you know, analysis—

B: Yeah.

S: —effective skeptical analysis—maybe you could reverse that and bring it back down.

J: Yeah, from from what the article said, it was, I think, an equal paragraph on the skeptical perspective –

S: Yes.

J: – and, specifically –

S: We really do have to argue for equal time and for getting the skeptical position –

J: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

S: – not the talking head blurb token skepticism may not – may still be counterproductive.

J: And the thing that he said was that there was that the article, the paragraph, did a takedown of the people that were claiming to be scientists.

S: Mm-hmm.

J: So, it stripped their expertise away, in essence.

S: Yeah. Yeah.

J: So, you know, I think it's interesting. I think that we're hard-wired for these things. I find, unfortunately, more and more TV programs—hey, you guys noticing, what's with the reality TV? Like, why is reality TV taking over television? Have you asked yourself that question?

S: 'Cause it's cheap.

E: It's cheap.

S: It's cheap, yeah.

(''applause'')

== Live Q&A (51:06) ==
* Questions from the CSICon audience

== Science or Fiction (55:19) ==

S: Item number one. A new study finds that astronauts who spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. Item number two. Scientists have discovered the first feathered dinosaur in the western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers. And item number three. Researchers find that, at the molecular level, evolutionary changes can be highly predictable.

== Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:08:11) ==
<blockquote>Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.</blockquote>
J: Paul Kurtz!

{{Outro1}}

== References ==
<references/>

{{Navigation}}

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-14T03:54:24Z

Cornelioid: /* Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44) */ proofread 1st half

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|episodeDate = 3rd November 2012 
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|qowText = Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality. 
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|}}

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

RW: – a live edition of my favorite podcast and radio show. So, we're going to have Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Jay Novella, Even Bernstein, and – and a woman –

(''laughter'')

RW: – join us. It's the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe!

(''applause'')

S: Hello, and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

(''applause'')

S: Today is Thursday, October 25th, 2012, and we are live from [http://www.csiconference.org/ CSICon 2012].

(''applause'')

Joining me, as always, are Bob Novella –

B: Hey everybody!

(''cheers'')

S: – Rebecca Watson –

R: Hello, everyone!

(''cheers'')

''audience member'': I love you, Rebecca!

R: I love you, too!

S: – Jay Novella...Jay Novella –

J: Wooooo! Rebecca, yeah!

(''cheers'')

R: I love you, Jay!

S: – and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hello, Nashville!

(''cheers'')

S: So, how're you guys doing? How do you like Nashville?

J: It's awesome. I didn't – I thought people were going to literally be playing guitar when I got off the airplane.

B: Oh, come on, Jay.

S: Yeah, in the airport, you know?

J: Yeah.

== This Day in Skepticism (1:28) ==
November 3, 1957 Sputnik 2 launched

S: So, Rebecca, you always start us off with a This Day in Science and Skepticism. This show will be going up on November 3rd, so, did anything happen that day?

R: Nope.

(''laughter'')

B: Ever?

R: Oh, all right. One thing happened. One thing happened! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_2 Sputnik 2] happened.

S: ''Sputnik 2: The Revenge''.

(''laughter'')

R: ''Son of Sputnik''.

S: ''Son of Sputnik''.

J: ''Son of Sputnik''!

R: That's right. Sputnik 2 you might know as "the one that killed the puppy".

(''awwws'')

R: No? Aww, that's weird, 'cause I really thought that this would go over well at a live event! Yeah, Sputnik 2 is the craft that took Laika into orbit, Laika being the Soviet space dog who became the first animal in orbit—for about, like, 10 minutes, before she died.

E: Well, you know –

S: A couple of hours. It was a couple of hours. They thought he was going to survive for about ten days –

R: I think she's a "she".

S: – ''she'' was going to survive –

E: Eh.

R: Get it right, Steve!

S: You know, asexual Russian names, I mean, come on. But, they thought that Laika was going to survive for about ten days, but then they had a little mishap with the cooling system, and –

E: Oops.

S: Yeah. – got a little hot in the capsule—104 degrees, they said in (''inaudible'')

E: That'd be a hot dog. Yep.

(''groans'')

B: Oh, come on. My god.

E: Thank you. I'll be here all the weekend.

R: How – can we just take a moment, just to take a poll of the audience: How are our dead dog jokes doing? Good?

J: Yes!

(''applause'')

R: OK. All right. Yeah.

J: You know what? I didn't know until we researched this item that it was a one-way mission.

R: Yeah.

E: Mm-hmm.

J: That's really nasty.

S: Well, the capsule returned.

(''laughter'')

E: Yeah, well –

S: About 162 days later, it burned up in the atmosphere. But, yeah, they never intended to bring Laika back.

J: No, they actually were going to euthanize her with poison food after the tenth day, I think, right?

R: This is seriously the worst item ever. What was I thinking when I picked it?

S: There – there's Laika.

E: Aww. Aww.

R: Oh yeah! I didn't pick it! Steve forced me to!

E: But, we'd never know who this dog was if it didn't go on Sputnik 2, right? I mean, this would be an otherwise – another animal.

R: No, yeah, and I'm sure Laika appreciates the fame she gets from ''beyond the grave''.

E: She got her fifteen minutes.

== In Memorium ==
=== Paul Kurtz (3:45) ===
* 1925-2012

S: Well, we are going to start the new segment of the show with an ''in memoriam''. We do like to, on the ''Skeptic's Guide'', pause to remember those members of the skeptical community who have passed, and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] died several days ago, just the day before the organizers were coming down to the conference. He died on Sunday. He was 85 years old. It was 1925 to 2012, so that is 86. I can do math. (''audience laughter'') You'll know why i was confused in a moment.

R: 'Cause you're terrible at math?

S: Yes. So, before we get the show started, Ron Lindsay and Kendrick Frazier talked about Paul Kurtz. You know, he was one of the giants of the skeptical movement, of the skeptical community. You know, he was largely responsible for organizing the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, founding Prometheus Books, CFI, [http://www.secularhumanism.org/ Secular Humanism]. He was an academic, a philosopher. He really gave a lot of weight to the movement early on. He made it to that – he broke it to that next level. It wasn't that, you know, before he came on board. So he has to be remembered for that. We did have some interactions with Paul along the years. The first year that we started – (''audience cooing'')

R: Baby Steve!

E: Aww.

S: I was a little younger back then.

R: He's three years old there.

B: He's only half-grey there.

S: (''laughing'') I'm only half-grey!

E: A little less grey, yep.

S: You can mark my age by my greyness up until about ten years ago, when i went totally grey. Right when we got started, in 1996, you know, CSICOP, now CSI, you know, they were the big national skeptical organization. They'd definitely – They took us under their wing, you know, gave us their support, their local membership list, so that we could get our movement going. And i remember meeting Paul at the first World Skeptics Conference, and he was immediately—like, you know, your grandfather—like, you know, very, very comfortably took on that air of being a mentor. It's like, "Yeah, this is great. You're welcome to the skeptical movement." So i definitely remember him fondly in that way. A few years later, Paul organized a meeting of the local skeptical groups. In the picture here you can see me again with Bob, Perry, and Evan. The four of us came up together –

J: Now, if i remember correctly, Rebecca, you and i were off being badass somewhere else, right?

R: I think that's what was happening, yeah.

S: – and, i think, in the foreground, that's Colonel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Nickell Joe Nickell], isn't it?

E: Colonel.

S: Yeah, he had broke his leg in Spain, or something?

R: Round of applause for Colonel Joe Nickell!

E: I remember that.

(''applause'')

S: Joe actually is going to come up, and he's going to read a poem that he wrote, i believe, about Paul.

JN: Paul was a great supporter of the arts, and i hope he would have liked this. The poem is called "Book of Seasons: An elegy". (''Uncertain re: permission to reproduce poem'')

S: Thank you, Joe.

=== Leon Jaroff (7:34) ===
* 1926-2012

S: This same weekend, Saturday before the show, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_(magazine) Leon Jaroff] also died. ''He'' was 85, hence my confusion. So, Leon Jariff—not a big name in the skeptical community recently, and if you ask, you know, people at conventions like this if they knew who he was – I mean, in fact, right before the show Rebecca said to me, "Who's Leon Jaroff?"

R: (''indignant gasp'')

S: Sorry, Rebecca.

(''audience laughter'')

S: But he was perhaps one of the most skeptical journalists that we have had.

B: Yeah.

S: He was the science columnist for ''Time Magazine''. It was he who said, "You know, popularizing science is important, you know, we should start a science-dedicated magazine." And that was ''Discover Magazine''. That was him. He was not afraid to be a hard-nosed skeptic when writing about scientific issues. So, for example, when writing about chiropractors, [http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,213482,00.html he wrote],

<blockquote>
Chiropractors also employ a bewildering variety of weird practices to diagnose their patients. Some use applied kinesiology, a muscle test that supposedly can diagnose allergies and diseased organs. Hair analysis and iris readings are commonplace in the profession. Even sillier are many of the treatments that chiropractors use and recommend: homeopathic potions, colon irrigation, magnetic therapy, enzyme pills, colored-light therapy, and something called "balancing body energy," among other mystical procedures with undocumented effects.
</blockquote>

S: That's from a mainstream journalist writing in ''Time Magazine''. Do we see this kind of thing today? I don't think so.

B: Nope.

(''audience applause'')

S: So, you know, we do have to, I think, also note the support that Jaroff gave to such a good science journalism, and that kind of hard-nosed, skeptical science journalism is definitely something we miss. That's a void that, I think, that we in the skeptical community have to fill, but, unfortunately, it is a void.

== News Items ==
=== Big Bang Conference at CERN (9:31)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19870036 Big Bang and religion mixed in Cern debate]

S: Rebecca –

R: Yes!

S: – this is a different quote. It's not as good a quote.

<blockquote>
Science in isolation is great for producing stuff, but not so good for producing ideas.
</blockquote>

R: Mm-hmm.

S: Who said that?

R: That was said by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Pinsent Andrew Pinsent] at the Ramsey Center for Science and Religion. What I particularly liked about this quote is that it is completely reversed – it is the exact opposite of what I would have suggested.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I would say that science is actually really good at ideas, but, in order to produce stuff, you have to add something else. You know, like, they might be able to figure out lasers, but to make a CD player you need a marketing executive.

S: Or death ray.

R: Thank you. Yeah, of course. Why didn't I go there first?

(''laughter'')

R: Yeah, so, this quote comes from a recent article that the BBC produced: "Big Bang and religion mixed in CERN debates". Apparently, there was a conference recently that CERN held—you remember CERN, you know, the guys who, apparently, may have found –

J: Higgs!

R: – the Higgs boson.

S: A boson with Higgs-like properties.

R: A Higgs-like thing.

S: Boson, yeah.

R: A Higgish. I like "Higgish" –

B: "Higgish"?

R: – a little bit.

J: (''laughing'') "A little bit!"

S: "Higgy"?

B: (''singing, inaudible'') ''Higgy again."

R: So, yes. Apparently, I don't know the purpose – I don't know what, who dreamt this up, but what I'm thinking is that someone was concerned that they may have found a particle that many people know as the "God particle", and, so, they're concerned that they're going to be excommunicated or, you know, that people will rebel—religious people will rebel—against science. Basically, we'll have some sort of Dark Ages–esque thing happening, and, so, maybe somebody at CERN thought, "Well, we should have this conference where we talk about how religious people should be OK with the Higgs boson."

B: Mm-hmm.

R: So, those are the good intentions that I'm assuming are behind this conference that has speakers such as this. The quotes in here are pretty fun, and none of them have any amount of intelligence to them. Steve, you're the one who brought this one to my attention here –

S: Yes.

R: I'm interested in what – we've talked a little bit before about things like the Templeton Foundation, which is an organization that gives out a prize – gives out prizes to people who can explore science in a religious context, basically. And I'm a bit opposed to it. I feel like it's muddying the waters. I think we don't ''need'' to bring religion into what people are doing at CERN.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I think those two things are happily separated, but I'm interested in knowing your feelings on this.

S: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think trying to introduce theology into science is misguided. You know, this conference was specifically about the origin of the universe. So, it's not just about scientific issues in particular. I think the thinking, at least on the part of the theologians who were quoted about this conference, is that, well, you're talking about the origin of the universe. That's a really big question, and religion is about answering the really big questions—not science. Science is narrow and reductionist, and makes stuff, but can't really grapple with the big questions of our origins. And that's exactly incorrect, as you were saying. That's a complete knock to science. I mean, science is, in fact, the only human intellectual endeavor that ''can'' answer any empirical question about the origin of the universe.

R: Yeah.

J: So, was the conference, though, the scientists trying to appease religious people? The saying that –

R: Well, you know, apparently, this was – the conference was done on the part of CERN, according to BBC, and that's what I find troubling. I'm totally OK with a conference that religious people host, you know, and the topic might be "How do we –" you know, "How do we consider our theology now that we know ''X'', ''Y'', and ''Z''—now that science has discovered this? What does that mean for ''our'' belief system?" And I think that's fine, but, you know, apparently, the theologians who were there seem to think that this was a chance to ''debate'' the scientists –

J: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

R: – and, no! Why would you do that? Debate is completely the opposite direction of where you want to go.

S: It also – I mean, the quotes seem to me like a desperate grasp at relevance, trying to make it seem like they're – you know, that theology is still relevant to questions about origins of the universe, when, in fact, science has completely displaced it from that endeavor.

J: So, did it end up with, like, a fistfight? Like, what happened?

(''laughter'')

E: Science won.

R: I haven't found any evidence of any arrests, so, apparently –

S: There were no fisticuffs?

J: That really must've been awkward as hell, though, right? Like, they're like, sitting there, like, after a whole day, and they're like, "Uh, OK, it's over now."

E: Something tells me they're not going to be doing this again. They're going to learn from this.

S: I don't know.

R: Well, I mean, it's actually not even – like, I wish it had been that exciting. But, instead, it just seems like it was really ''boring'' –

E: Yeah.

R: – and nobody came to ''any'' conclusions. Because you ''can't'', you know?

S: Yeah.

R: You're just having a discussion of, like, well, you know, "But what don't we know?"

=== Italian Earthquake Scientists Convicted (14:57)===
* [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/22/us-italy-earthquake-court-idUSBRE89L13V20121022 Italian scientists convicted over earthquake warning]

S: Now, we're trying to keep – we like to keep our live shows really light –

(''laughter'')

E: So far, so good.

S: So, we thought we'd talk about a horrible earthquake that killed over three hundred people.

E: Yeah, let's go there.

R: Good intro. Good intro there.

S: But there's actually a better story embedded in that. There were six Italian scientists, who were recently convicted of manslaughter –

B: Yeah.

S: – for failure to properly communicate the warnings about the upcoming L'Aquila earthquake in 2009. Yeah, we've been following this story, you know, since it happened. The quick version is that there were a number of small tremors in this very earthquake-prone part of Italy, and the geologists—the local geologists—you know, were following it. And their opinion was that, well, these tremors are very common. Most such tremors are not followed by major quakes. Most major quakes are not preceded by these kinds of tremors. So, the probability of a major quake occurring is not particularly higher, you know, now, just because of these tremors, than at any time, and, therefore, there's no cause for alarm. Now, they were specifically asked during a press conference, "Should we panic?" You know, "Should we evacuate?" And they said "No. There's no reason to evacuate. Stay at home and drink a glass of wine."

B: Steve, was this about a year ago that we covered this?

S: 2009. 2009 –

B: Oh, wow. (''inaudible'')

S: – so, was the quake, and then the court trial started about a year ago, and now the decision came down that the six scientists were convicted to six years – I think six years in prison and something like, you know, millions of dollars in damages for manslaughter—for the deaths of the people who didn't evacuate because they – of their reassurances that there was nothing to be worried about.

R: That's horrific.

J: Well, i, you know, to play devil's advocate real quick, if there was true negligence—like, if they didn't follow through with things that they needed to do, if they did a terrible job at analyzing the data, in a fashion that – where the data could have been analyzed better, or they actually weren't asking their peers for the information—i can understand if there was extreme negligence.

S: Right.

J: But, even still, like, that's very hard to prove, and I just don't understand –

S: Well, I mean, not really. The question is, was their opinion within the standard for their profession? That's—in my opinion—that's the only real question here. You can't be blamed for being wrong, right? You can't be blamed for a bad outcome if you were following the standard. Now, of course, scientists can't predict earthquakes. You can't predict when an earthquake is going to occur. That's the bottom line. What – every statement they said was truthful, you know, every factual statement. "These tremors do not necessarily mean that there's an earthquake coming, and they are not a reason to evacuate. We don't evacuate every city where there's tremors because there might be a major quake, because it's not that predictive." So, that was not negligent. No, and they weren't really being accused of negligence. They were basically being accused of poorly communicating to the public. It seems to be based on a lot of false premises about what scientists ''can know''—what an expert about, you know, an earthquake, a geologist, expert ''can know''.

R: Yeah, they've been convicted for not using a magical power they don't have.

S: Yeah.

R: They might as well have convicted all the psychics in Italy for not accurately predicting this earthquake.

J: I think we need to be careful—i don't disagree, of course. I don't think that these men should be going to jail for this at all—but it is an important thing to state that, I think, people should go to prison, or get in trouble ''legally'', if they are misrepresenting science or – right? So you see where I'm going with this.

S: Well, yeah. If you are –

J: If you're setting that premise—you're saying, "Hey, these guys screwed up, they didn't do what they were supposed to do, they didn't communicate to us the real possible outcomes here", whatever—and, like –

S: Yeah.

J: – I'll reiterate, I don't think that they should be going to jail—

B: Well, I don't agree –

J: —but, I do think, though, that that standard that that court set needs to be applied all the way down the ladder.

B: Yeah, but, Jay, like, someone saying that "I have a cure for cancer and it's scientifically proven" but it's a sham?

J: Exactly, right? So, if they're going to actually take those scientists out and say "You're done. You're not performing science anymore and you're going to jail for that bad decision or information you gave", well, hello! Then, you know, all of a sudden, a million lawsuits need to be filed.

S: But, it wasn't – to clarify, though, it wasn't ''bad'', it was just ''unlucky''. I mean, doctors encounter this all the time, you know. You are asked to decide, you know, what tests to order, what diagnoses a patient might have. There's a whole lot of liability involved with that. You can't be convicted of malpractice just because of a bad outcome if what you did was within the standard of care.

B: Right.

S: So, was the information they were giving to the public within the standard for the profession? If the answer is "yes", the fact that there was a low-probability earthquake the next week is not their fault.

E: Right.

S: It doesn't change the fact – you know, if they're saying there's a 99% chance that there's not going to be an earthquake, and then the 1% thing happens, they were still right –

J: Yeah.

S: – in saying that it was unlikely.

R: Yeah.

E: Didn't the evidence show, basically, that they performed correctly, essentially? They did not –

S: That's the consensus. I mean, so, there's worldwide outrage, especially among the scientific community (''inaudible'') –

B: This has got to be shot down in a higher court.

S: Yeah.

B: This can't – can't possibly stand.

E: I hope so.

S: Well, there's two appeals left. There's two appeals, and they will stay out of prison before those appeals. So, the United States National Academy of Science, the Royal Academy of Science—the Royal Society, rather—issued a joint statement saying that "that is why we must protest the verdict in Italy. If it becomes a precedent in law, it could lead to a situation in which scientists will be afraid to give expert opinion."

J: Yeah, that's devastating.

E: Mm-hmm.

S: So, it would have a chilling effect. What – you know, what geologist is going to, you know, talk to the public in Italy now, if you could wind up in jail and, you know, financially devastated, and your career devastated, because you can't predict the future, you know, because you don't have a crystal ball? It's insane. It's insane.

J: Yeah. To think that they're going after these scientists, and they're not going after the rampant quackery throughout –

S: Well, there's that, too.

E: I wonder how much pressure they came under from, like, the families, the survivors, of this terrible, terrible devastation –

J: Oh yeah, they had to hang someone.

E: – and I imagine they put a lot of pressure on politicians and other people in order to hold ''somebody'' accountable.

J: They have to. They had to send someone down the river for that.

B: Did they have a trial?

S: Yeah.

B: Did they have witnesses and experts coming in?

S: Yeah. Yep.

B: I'd love to know the details of what exactly happened, because how could –

(''laughter'')

S: So, we'll see if the worldwide backlash has an effect. I mean, again, they do have two appeals left, so we'll definitely follow it.

=== Whale Makes Human Sounds (21:35)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20026938 Beluga whale 'makes human-like sounds']

S: All right, Rebecca, so, we have a cute animal –

R: Thank you.

S: – we're going to talk about now.

J: This is a happy one!

R: Just tell me this narwhal or whatever is alive.

S: It's a whale.

E: It's alive and well.

S: It's a beluga whale.

B: It sort of looks like a narwhal.

R: Tell me this beluga is alive!

E: That's NOC the beluga. They're very much alive.

R: It's not a beluga?

E: "NOC". N-O-C.

S: "NOC". NOC the beluga.

R: Oh! "That's NOC."

(''laughter'')

R: I was about to say, "No, ''that is a beluga''."

S: Sounds like a children's song.

E: It does sound like a children's –

S: Evan, sing it.

E: No.

S: OK.

J: Don't change it! Please don't –

E: If my daughter was here, maybe. But, no. So, what's important about NOC the beluga? Well, OK, so, picture this: You are part of the National Marine Mammal Foundation, OK, and you're in the tank, swimming around with the whales and stuff, and, all of a sudden, you hear somebody—you hear a voice—call your name. Something to the effect that – "Get out of the water! Get out of the water!" So, you're in the tank and you come up and you say, "OK, who told me to get out of the water? Who told me to get out of the water?" And the other scientists and people are looking around you like, "Nobody? What the heck are you talking about?" And, he's like, "Well, I definitely ''heard'' that!" Well, what did he actually hear? Well, apparently, NOC the beluga made some noises very reminiscent of human noises. Beluga whales are, you know, incredible creatures. Their calls – They're known as the canaries of the sea. They have a very high-frequency, high-pitched tone to their noises that they make, but they make lots of different kinds of noises. They can emit up to eleven different kinds of sounds—crackles, whistles, trills, squawks—all sorts of things. But, it's been rumored that these whales can emit noises that sound like humans talking. And, for the first time, they've actually recorded NOC the whale making these noises, and they have it on tape. And we have it on tape.

R: Nah.

(''NOC makes unnervingly human-sounding noises'')

R: Did he maybe just swallow a kazoo?

(''laughter'')

J: Everybody has a drunk neighbor that makes those noises.

(''laughter'')

E: Oh, gosh. Who knows what the heck he was saying? You know, dolphins have been taught to mimic noises that kind of sound like human voices, but, before this, there's been no record of an animal ''spontaneously'' coming up and making these kinds of noises. This is the first evidence, the first hard evidence we have of it.

R: Here's – I have a theory. I have a theory. I have a theory that – so, whales, in general, are incredibly intelligent –

E: Oh yeah.

R: – possibly as smart as us, but they don't want thumbs, or any way to talk to us –

E: Or fire.

R: – and I feel like they do, basically – That's true. No, I saw Spongebob once. There was fire under the sea. I think it can be done.

S: Yep, but they don't have nanotechnology, though.

R: They don't. So, my theory is that whales are basically, like – they have – it's like they have locked-in syndrome, you know? Where they're just –

J: Oh, no.

R: – super-intelligent, and there's all these people around them, and they're just messing with them –

J: So, he was screaming, actually –

R: Yeah! And, so, he's been like, his whole life, he's been in this stupid little – like, he's in captivity, right? So, he's been in this stupid little aquarium, and he's just, like, "I hate all of you! And I'm going to will myself to tell you, because you're too stupid to understand!"

E: So, basically, what's going on here is, the whale has learned to change – rapidly change pressure within its naval cavity in order to create these sounds. And, it hasn't – the whale is able to over-inflate what's known as its vestibular sac in its blowhole, which is normally acts to stop water from basically coming in. So, the whale is going through a lot of, you know, effort, essentially, to try to make these noises. And I'm sure they're going to be trying to figure out exactly, you know, basically, ''why'' is the whale doing this?

S: Well, he just – this whale was – did spend his life in captivity –

E: Yeah.

S: – so, he did hear human speech a lot, and maybe he's just, to some extent, mimicking the sounds that he grew up hearing his whole life.

J: It's definitely – it definitely has a human sound to it, in the cadence and everything.

S: Yeah.

J: I mean, he's intelligent enough to mimic a human, which is really cool.

R: Yeah.

J: And, then, you always think, you know, if he can mimic a human—if his brain is advanced that much—you know, maybe he –

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But, is he mimicking humans or making fun of humans? You know, like people make fun of other languages?

R: Yeah, he's just like "Weh! Weh! Weh! This is what you sound like!"

E: Yeah. You stupid bald monkey and (''inaudible'')! Get out of here!

B: Sounds like a false dichotomy.

=== PANDAS Controversy (26:18)===
* [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/a-pandas-story/ A PANDAS Story]

S: So, we're going to talk about – going from talking about beluga whales to talking about PANDAS! Except, we're not talking about pandas, because we're talking about –

E: Wait.

R: Stop toying with my emotions, Steve!

S: I had to put a cute picture of a panda up there for you, Rebecca. We are talking about pediatric autoimmune –

R: It makes sense.

S: – neuropsychiatric disorder associated with –

E: I didn't know PANDA was an acronym. Cool!

R: Steve, I miss the panda.

S: – streptococcal infection—or, PANDAS. See? There's a panda.

(''laughter, cooing'')

E: Aww!

R: Yay.

S: We're talking about PANDAS –

E: Aww.

R: Boo.

J: Oh.

E: That's worse.

S: – which is a legitimately controversial medical diagnosis! So, essentially, what happens is, children suddenly develop ticks—like Tourette syndrome—and psychiatric disorders—obsessive–compulsive disorder—and it is thought that, in some cases, that it is actually – the inciting event is an infection—bacteria—streptococcal infection. Now, of course, it's always difficult to establish the reality of a new disease. Unless you get all your ducks in a row, and all the, you know, pathology all adds up, it's sometimes difficult to identify a legitimate new syndrome and to prove that – cause and effect. So, correlation is one thing. As we know, correlation is not ''necessarily'' causation. And, so, the syndrome exists. There are – the number of physicians who have identified the sudden onset psychiatric – neuropsychiatric disorder, and in some cases it is temporally associated with a streptococcal infection. But that's not the same thing as saying that the strep infection ''caused'' the neuropsychiatric syndrome. So, that's – and there's the controversy. Now, of course, we live in the modern Internet age. So, as soon as a scientist says, "I think that there's this syndrome—I want to call it PANDAS—and – sort of, you know, a psychiatric syndrome provoked by a bacterial infection", of course, there are now support groups, and there's groups on the Internet, and there's patient groups supporting this diagnosis before the science is even settled. And, then, of course, once that happens, when you try to do more science, or have any kind of discussion about whether or not this is a real syndrome, you have parents and patient groups and advocacy groups, you know, calling you all kinds of nasty names and saying there's a conspiracy against people with PANDAS, it's all the insurance companies and Big Pharma and evil doctors or whatever. So, that's the situation that we're in the middle of right now, unfortunately, is that, before the science is settled, you know, there's the scientific controversy, then there's the public controversy. This came to the media attention recently because of a 16-year-old girl called Elizabeth Wray. She developed, you know, a syndrome like PANDAS with ticks and psychological disorders, was diagnosed by a physician with PANDAS, and then was transferred to Boston's Children's Hospital for – presumably for further treatment of PANDAS. Now, the story that is going around the PANDAS community is that once she got to Boston University—or Boston Children's Hospital—she was told – the parents were told, "We don't believe that PANDAS is real – that it exists", and then they essentially admitted their daughter to the psychiatric unit and started treating her with psychiatric medications. Now, I don't know if that's true, because the doctors and the hospital are not telling their side of the story because of patient confidentiality. So, we don't know what their side of the story is. We only know the parents' side of the story, filtered through the PANDAS community. Unfortunately, now there's – this story has taken on a life of its own. There's a Free Elizabeth Wray movement going on within the PANDAS community, they're telling all kinds of horror stories about Boston Children's Hospital, and, you know, we can't verify any of it. What's interesting in reading about it is that each side has their narrative—and I wrote about this on Science-Based Medicine—because one of the things that – the ideas that we're wrestling with in the skeptical community is that—well, all right, we have, I think, a good approach to critical thinking, we understand a lot about self-deception, about the nature of science and pseudoscience—but we don't always have a good story to tell the public, or we have a hard time convincing mainstream outlets that we have – that our story is an interesting and good one. You know, we have to really market our narrative—the skeptical narrative. When you read about stories like this, the PANDAS proponents have a really compelling emotional narrative. It may be total B.S.—i don't know—but it's very compelling. They have a story of a child suffering from an unusual disease, parents who just want to do what's right for her—I believe all those things are correct—and then they are, essentially, being abused by a dismissive and skeptical medical establishment who doesn't believe in this disease, and that is treating their child with perhaps harmful, you know, psychiatric medications. They even – this went to court. Apparently, the hospital thought that the parents were being negligent in not allowing them to give proper standard of care—psychiatric treatment—to their child, and they wanted to have custody taken away from the parents, and they wanted to admit Elizabeth to a locked psychiatric ward—again, not sure – I can't verify those from the hospital's side of things. A judge – a Massachusetts judge essentially made her a ward of the state while they sorted out what was going on, but they did not grant the hospital their request to treat her in the way that they wanted to. So, they essentially just – the state took her out of everybody's hands for a moment – for the moment. So, it's interesting. Of course, the PANDAS community, again, is up in arms, you know. The court essentially took custody away from these parents that are only trying to do what's right for their daughter. But, of course, you could see the other narrative—you know, let's assume that the physicians think that—even if you think – whether or not you think PANDAS really exists—they think that she has a psychiatric illness, the parents are in denial, they're pursuing this false diagnosis, and they're, you know, refusing standard medical care. That's a story, too.

B: What if you just pulled out the whole strep association, and just treat it like a "pandisorder"? Is their beef that it's associated with strep, and they don't think there's any association? Why don't they just treat it like a neuropsychiatric disorder –

S: Yeah.

B: – and forget about the whole strep association?

S: Well, because the strep association would lead you to treat with things like antibiotics. So, that's the question: Should you treat it with antibiotics, or should you treat her like a psychiatric (''inaudible'') patient?

J: Why not both? I mean, why wouldn't you –

S: Well, she has had at least one round of antibiotics. You can also treat it like an autoimmune disease, with, like, intravenous globulin, for example. So, I mean, these are real medical questions. Do we treat it like an infection, do we treat it like a post-infectious auto-immune disease, or do we treat it like a psychiatric disorder? Those are real questions.

J: Steve, are you saying pandas don't exist? Let me just get this straight.

(''laughter'')

S: So, well, I did – to give a serious answer to your sarcastic question, I did –

R: My favorite kind.

S: – take the opportunity – I'm good that way. I'm good that way. I did take the opportunity just to familiarize myself with the PANDAS literature—again, I always emphasize, I'm no an expert in this, but I can read the literature and give my opinion like a science journalist—i think it's genuinely controversial. When I read the research, there's lots of – the ducks are not in a row. So, when you do things like treat kids who apparently have PANDAS with antibiotics in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, they don't necessarily improve. And, if you look for the antibodies that are supposed to be there, they don't necessarily correlate with the disease onset or with the existence of strep. So –

B: So, this is clearly not like autism and vaccines. It's just more complicated than that.

S: So, no. So, right. So, autism and vaccines, like, I would say, that's been studied enough to say that autism's – that autism is not caused by vaccines. We can say that. We can make the negative statement. I cannot make the negative statement that PANDAS does not exist, only that the research so far has not reached the threshold where we can agree that it does exist and that there is some actual negative data—there's some positive data, too—so it's legitimately controversial. It did remind me, though, of the chronic Lyme disease controversy—

R: Yeah.

S: —which is very common in New England—again, where they think that a number of symptoms, including neurological symptoms, can be caused by a bacterial infection and treated with antibiotics. And the same – there's a lot of overlap in those two communities, you know.

J: Steve, are you saying that the public has unrealistic expectations?

S: Well, I think – it's partly that. I mean, I think the public is uncomfortable with the uncertainty, and they like this sort of hero–villain narrative, so they paint the medical community as the villains, and—except for those maverick physicians who understand. They're Lyme-literate, or they understand PANDAS, so they're the heroes—and, then, the insurance companies don't want to pay for, you know, over-and-over recurrent courses of IV antibiotics, so they're the villains, you know. They're not—I'm not defending insurance companies, but sometimes they actually – sometimes they're right. They don't want to pay for things that are not science-based or evidence-based. So, it's complicated. And, you know, how do we – so, how do we deal with a child with this disorder when we don't know what the best scientific answer is—we don't know if it's autoimmune, infectious, or psychiatric? We just have to, you know, do the best we can—and there may be different physicians who would take different approaches—but to portray it as "PANDAS definitely exists. If you don't believe in it, you're dismissive and you're mean and evil, or you're protecting some kind of Big Pharma grant that you're getting"—they always bring that up—rather than saying, "You know, we really want to know the right answer, but we just haven't found it yet. It's still – it's legitimately controversial."

J: Yeah, I think what you're saying does confirm what I was thinking, is that the public wants an answer, science is not yet done figuring this one out, and –

S: Yeah. Like the earthquake one, right?

J: Yeah.

S: Sometimes the answer is, "We don't know yet", you know. "We need to do more research". In medicine, we have to make decisions with imperfect, you know, information, so, you know.

J: Wouldn't it be typical, too – like, let's say that this is happening over and over again –

S: Yeah.

J: – like, at some point, some doctors are going to come up with different ideas, they're going to try it out, you know. The trial-and-error process happens, and—i hate to say it, but—this girl is probably going to be one of the people that gets tested on with new ideas.

S: Well, I mean – well, if you're really testing then you should be doing a research protocol. If you're just applying the best knowledge that we have to an individual patient, that's – a certain amount of trial and error with that that's not really experimentation. So, there is a difference there. So, I don't know. The other interesting question that I'm kind of alluding to is, what role do the patient or the advocacy groups play? I think, a lot of times, that they are helpful in raising awareness for a disease or a disorder and raising funding, and advocating for patients. You know, I've seen, I think, there's a lot of very effective, very good patient advocacy groups out there. But, sometimes, they put their nickel down on a specific scientific answer, and that's not their job.

J: Yeah.

S: It's not their job to predict or demand that science give them the answer they want. And, you know, unfortunately, some people want the answer to be "an infection"—not "genes", not, you know, "We don't know".

J: Yeah. It's curable. That's the one they want.

S: Of course, who – that's the answer I would want to have! "It's something outside that is, you know, foreign, that can be cured, and that can reverse my child to the way that they were". Who – every parent wants that to be the answer, but sometimes you – you know, you have to step back from what you want and listen to the evidence. That's the – that's the scientist's, that's the physician's job, you know. You should just let them do their job, you know.

J: All right, so, I want to bring up a quick side point on this.

S: Yeah.

J: So, as an example, let's say, fifty years ago, let's say this was happening. What stance do you think the public would have differently than what we're seeing today?

S: It's the same, and this ''did'' happen fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, you know, she would be diagnosed with neurosyphilis—maybe not somebody who was sixteen, but that was the stand-in for what we now would, you know, the same subculture would diagnose with chronic Lyme. There were believers in that. There were physicians who believed in treatments like chelation therapy, you know, and science proved it wrong, and they said, "Well, we don't care, we're going to still do it. We're going to come up with – We're just going to keep coming up with special pleading and alternate theories, and form our own societies and our own – and just keep doing it, and say that it's all a conspiracy."

J: Mm-hmm.

S: So, but, I think that it's just the turnaround time is so much faster because of the Internet. Like, another example: CCSVI, right? The alleged blockage in the veins that drained blood from the brain, causing multiple sclerosis. It's that – that whole process—of Dr. Zamboni proposing this entity and a treatment, to it being researched, to it being refuted, to, you know, patient advocacy groups springing up and calling for conspiracies and calling for research and demanding that science give them the answer that they want—all has taken place within a few years. We've seen that cycle happen right before our eyes. So, the Internet is just making it happen a lot quicker and a lot bigger, I think. But it's always been this way.

J: So do you have any ideas on what we could do? Could the skeptical community do anything to help this (''inaudible'')?

S: Well, I think what we do is, we discuss the issue from a science, logical, critical thinking point of view, you know. We point out the role of science in this, and we, I think, we try to bring the public discourse to a level that can deal with it in a more productive way, rather than the conspiracy mongering, sort of lowest-common-denominator that it would otherwise sink to.

J: Yeah.

=== Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44)===
* pnd

{{transcribing
|transcriber = Cornelioid
}}

S: Well, let's move on. Jay, we're talking about how the media presents stories about paranormal activities.

J: Yeah, this is interesting. So, a professor decided to—Professor Brewer decided that—because what we're seeing over the years is a very obvious interest, in the general public, to news articles, and to TV shows, that talk about ghosts—and, you know, we've all seen the ''Ghost Hunter'' TV show—and, to people like us, at best, we watch it, and it's fun, right? 'Cause it's ridiculous and entertaining, and we like to see people from our perspective—a skeptical perspective—they're acting foolishly. But, there are a lot of people that are watching this, and they're riveted. Like, they really love it and they think a lot of it's real—and, i'm sure, to a certain degree, i can't say everyone that watches it and thinks everything about it is real—but, in the end, there's a huge entertainment factor there, and, unfortunately, to us skeptics, we feel like there's a lot of people that simply believe it, and that's their favorite entertainment. And i know a lot of people—I'm friends with a lot of people—that literally have active discussions on Facebook all the time, that i dip into, that are talking about the latest TAPS show. It would be be, "Can you believe it?" and "I knew that place was haunted!", and they're like, you know, getting whooped up.

S: I don't get it. I just don't get it. Nothing happens!

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

R: That's not true! That's not true.

E: Like "Seinfeld", yeah.

S: But, i mean, but they never find a ghost.

R: Steve, Steve. Did you feel that?

(''laughter'')

R: That happens! That happens all the time.

(''applause'')

R: They feel so much.

J: The thing is, you know –

S: I want to see a [http://www.hark.com/clips/pnzwffccqk-10-people-witnessed-a-free-floating-full-torso-vaporous-apparition full, floating torso] drift across the camera lens. Then i'll be impressed.

B: I still won't believe it. (''inaudible'')

S: No, but at least it'll be entertaining.

J: A lot of the shows, though, they're all right on the cusp, you know, of the noise, right? They're always right on that cusp. They're always ''just'' seeing something, or something falls over, you know? Or there's a noise from upstairs, or whatever, and it's never – they never give you that, you know? You don't get that –

R: This, actually – this came up—tomorrow i'll be talking about the [http://paranormalroadtrip.org/ paranormal road trip] that i just went on with [http://www.jonronson.com/ Jon Ronson] and [http://richardwiseman.wordpress.com/ Richard Wiseman] that got us here—and, at one of the stops, we were at a – we did talk to someone in a "haunted museum", and she was telling us that "the ghost hunters were there, and it was very exciting because there was a noise in the attic, and there were steps (''step sounds'') even though nobody was up there, and so the ghost hunter ran over and climbed up the ladder and looked into the attic, and, just then, a lady, dressed all in white, came ''flying at him'', and he shrieked in horror and fell down the ladder, and it was all really dramatic", and we were just completely blown away, obviously. We were riveted –

E: Yeah, well.

R: – and we said, "We cannot ''wait'' to see that footage!"

(''groans'')

R: – and she said, "Actually, i mean, it was so good, they didn't actually get that on camera.

B: Darn it!

R: No, all the cameras were down in another room somewhere."

J: Yeah, of course.

E: Well.

S: That was like –

R: "There's literally no evidence of it", though. Yeah.

S: – Ed Warren. We were investigating Ed Warren. He told us this story of being in a haunted house, and they had a local news crew over there, and, like, for two hours, they videotaped things flying around the room, you know, like, i say, really impressive, you know, smoking-gun evidence of paranormal activity. We're like, "Great! Can we see that footage?"

E: Sure!

J: "Yeah!"

S: "You know what? They taped over it for the news segment later that night."

(''laughter'')

S: Go – go figure. Stupid news crew.

J: So, i – i'm going to ask a couple of questions that i want you guys to not answer right now, but just think about it, 'cause these are pretty obvious questions, but i think they're interesting. "Why do people believe, or like to believe, in the paranormal? What's the attraction?" It's an interesting question if you think about it. There are people who ''really'' seek it out and love it. And there's something exciting about it, something kind of visceral about it. To my mind—to a skeptical mind—i don't have a connection to it. I just don't see what that allure is, other than, maybe—because i do like horror movies, and i do like to get scared. I love being actually scared in a movie theater. It doesn't happen that often, but when it does happen it's very thrilling—and, maybe they're just having a lot of those thrilling moments. It's easier for them to get scared.

R: But, also, i mean, don't you think, maybe, it's got something to do with the fact that, maybe, we're not going to rot in the ground and die and never see our loved ones again? maybe?

J: Maybe? It's – you know, i'm not going to say no, but when i think about it, there's something thrilling about it. I'm not thinking, as i'm being thrilled in a horror movie, "Oh, i'm defying death by being thrilled right now!" It's not happening. I'm just – there is something – it's like, you know, eating something really spicy that hurts.

S: Yeah, but –

J: It hurts, but it's good at the same time, right?

E: Uh.

S: To a lot of people, definitely, evidence of ghosts is evidence of the afterlife. That's the appeal.

R: Yeah, and when we talk to people who describe their own experiences often—they're talking about Grandma and Grandpa and whatnot coming back to them and telling them that it's all OK—you know, and they're very comforting messages –

J: Yeah, which is why

S: They want a narrative.

E: Which is why they watch these shows. It reinforces these positions that these people have, you know, and they derive a certain, you know, need –

J: I wonder, though, because those shows are so bad! They're so bad.

R: I mean, there's a lot of – No, no, no! Personally, i would derive a lot of happiness from knowing that my dearly beloved grandmother, who i adored when i was young—she died when i was young—i would get so much happiness knowing that she was just screwing around with asshole ghosthunters on TV. Just, like, brushing past them and disappearing whenever the cameras come out you know? That would give me a lot of satisfaction, knowing that.

J: Maybe the skeptical version of it is watching a YouTube video of Hitchens just tearing some moron apart, right? That's our version of that?

E: That releases endorphins, yeah.

J: That makes me believe in something, right?

E: Yeah.

J: It gives me a thrill, but – OK, anyways. So, there is an article we're talking about here. So, Dr. Paul Brewer, who is – teaches at the University of Deleware, developed a study that was recently published in the journal ''Science: Communication'' that examines the influence of the media on the public's perception of the paranormal. So, here's his test: He took four news articles that were similar to each other, but they had significant differences in some of the details. The essence of it was, he had an article on one end of the spectrum that described a paranormal effect with a paranormal investigator, and they were using instruments to measure things, or whatever. And, then, as you go down to the fourth article, the fourth article gets very descriptive about using, you know, faux scientific language to make the paranormal investigators sound scientifically-minded, and using scientific tools. And, what he found was, the more of the faux science that was in the article, the more that the people believed that the paranormal accounts were true. You know, it's kind of a kick in the gut for us skeptics, because—and for us scientists, because—they're using our lingo, and our vernacular, and the way that we go about presenting data, and they're fooling people with it—because, i think, the general public is trained to a certain degree to recognize scientific language and recognize the formality of science—and they're using that—and i don't know how deliberate it is. Maybe they figured it out for the TV shows, that, you know, "hey, the more we B.S. this, the more we make this meter look cool and we throw in, you know, technical jargon, the more people that are going to be interested in our TV show"—

B: I think they also believe it themselves, Jay. They think they're being scientific.

J: Yeah.

E: That's right, yeah.

B: That's a big part of it as well.

E: You bet they do.

J: So, Brewer said it wasn't just any story about paranormal investigators that made people believe in ghosts and haunted houses. It was a story about how they were scientific. So, he puts a big emphasis on the science there. And, the good news was that he said that they might look at this and say, "Well, all it takes is this sprinkle of some acronyms in there, and wave around a cool-looking thing that beeps, and suddenly people believe in ghosts and haunted houses." Now, the one cool thing about his research was, he also found that if, at the end of the article, there was a skeptical disclaimer that said "This is the skeptical perspective. This is why that investigation was wrong. This is the mistakes that they made and this is why these instruments are bogus."—if they threw that in there—it actually made the people believe in the claims a lot less.

R: What?

J: Yeah, it actually worked.

R: The thing that we're always complaining about—that, like, one sentence that presents –

S: The token skeptic?

E: The token skeptic, yeah.

R: – the entirety of skeptical opinion—that actually does make a difference?

J: Well, i don't want to – i don't want to say that the token skeptic 30-second B.S. blurb that they cut on most of the TV shows that we see works. The way that he presented it, it seemed a little bit like it had more teeth. It wasn't a quick thing. I think it was a little bit more of a takedown.

S: So, there was a series of studies about ten years ago, where they looked at the same thing—at the presentation of pseudoscience in a documentary and its effect on people's belief in the subject matter, like belief in UFOs or alien visitation—and they found some similar things in that, when it was presented scientifically, that absolutely increased belief. They also found that if, at any point in time, it was said—there was any kind of disclaimer saying—the following claims are true, or that the following claims may or may not be true, or whatever—anything positive or negative—reduced belief, or reduced the increase in belief, following the segment. So, anything that triggered people's questioning about, is it true or is it not true, was actually a good thing. But they found the opposite in that the token skepticism at the end—a scientists coming in at the end and saying, you know, "We've evaluated this, and it's not true", ''increased'' belief in the thing, because it lent legitimacy to the whole enterprise—the very fact that a scientist was spending their time and giving their attention to it.

J: Oh, yeah.

S: So –

B: Is that a cultural change –

S: Well, maybe –

B: – or is it the study?

S: Well, all right. I don't know. I don't know what the answer to that is. But, one possible interpretation may be that the ''token'' ineffective skepticism actually has a negative effect in raising belief in the paranormal because it's lending false legitimacy, but if you give ''effective'', you know, analysis—

B: Yeah.

S: —effective skeptical analysis—maybe you could reverse that and bring it back down.

J: Yeah, from from what the article said, it was, i think, an equal paragraph on the skeptical perspective –

S: Yes.

J: – and, specifically –

S: We really do have to argue for equal time and for getting the skeptical

J: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

S: – not the talking head blurb token skepticism may not – may still be counterproductive.

J: And the thing that he said was that there was – the article, the paragraph, did a takedown of the people that were claiming to be scientists.

S: Mm-hmm.

J: So, it stripped their expertise away, in essence.

S: Yeah. Yeah.

J: So, you know, i think it's interesting. I think that we're hard-wired for these things. I find, unfortunately, more and more TV programs—hey, you guys noticing, what's with the reality TV? Like, why is reality TV taking over television? I mean, have you asked yourself that question?

S: 'Cause it's cheap.

E: It's cheap.

(''applause'')

== Live Q&A (51:06) ==
* Questions from the CSICon audience

== Science or Fiction (55:19) ==

S: Item number one. A new study finds that astronauts who spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. Item number two. Scientists have discovered the first feathered dinosaur in the western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers. And item number three. Researchers find that, at the molecular level, evolutionary changes can be highly predictable.

== Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:08:11) ==
<blockquote>Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.</blockquote>
J: Paul Kurtz!

{{Outro1}}

== References ==
<references/>

{{Navigation}}

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-10T01:12:59Z

Cornelioid: /* Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44) */ remainder of segment (unproofed)

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|episodeDate = 3rd November 2012 
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|qowText = Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality. 
|qowAuthor = [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] 
|}}

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

RW: – a live edition of my favorite podcast and radio show. So, we're going to have Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Jay Novella, Even Bernstein, and – and a woman –

(''laughter'')

RW: – join us. It's the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe!

(''applause'')

S: Hello, and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

(''applause'')

S: Today is Thursday, October 25th, 2012, and we are live from [http://www.csiconference.org/ CSICon 2012].

(''applause'')

Joining me, as always, are Bob Novella –

B: Hey everybody!

(''cheers'')

S: – Rebecca Watson –

R: Hello, everyone!

(''cheers'')

''audience member'': I love you, Rebecca!

R: I love you, too!

S: – Jay Novella...Jay Novella –

J: Wooooo! Rebecca, yeah!

(''cheers'')

R: I love you, Jay!

S: – and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hello, Nashville!

(''cheers'')

S: So, how're you guys doing? How do you like Nashville?

J: It's awesome. I didn't – I thought people were going to literally be playing guitar when I got off the airplane.

B: Oh, come on, Jay.

S: Yeah, in the airport, you know?

J: Yeah.

== This Day in Skepticism (1:28) ==
November 3, 1957 Sputnik 2 launched

S: So, Rebecca, you always start us off with a This Day in Science and Skepticism. This show will be going up on November 3rd, so, did anything happen that day?

R: Nope.

(''laughter'')

B: Ever?

R: Oh, all right. One thing happened. One thing happened! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_2 Sputnik 2] happened.

S: ''Sputnik 2: The Revenge''.

(''laughter'')

R: ''Son of Sputnik''.

S: ''Son of Sputnik''.

J: ''Son of Sputnik''!

R: That's right. Sputnik 2 you might know as "the one that killed the puppy".

(''awwws'')

R: No? Aww, that's weird, 'cause I really thought that this would go over well at a live event! Yeah, Sputnik 2 is the craft that took Laika into orbit, Laika being the Soviet space dog who became the first animal in orbit—for about, like, 10 minutes, before she died.

E: Well, you know –

S: A couple of hours. It was a couple of hours. They thought he was going to survive for about ten days –

R: I think she's a "she".

S: – ''she'' was going to survive –

E: Eh.

R: Get it right, Steve!

S: You know, asexual Russian names, I mean, come on. But, they thought that Laika was going to survive for about ten days, but then they had a little mishap with the cooling system, and –

E: Oops.

S: Yeah. – got a little hot in the capsule—104 degrees, they said in (''inaudible'')

E: That'd be a hot dog. Yep.

(''groans'')

B: Oh, come on. My god.

E: Thank you. I'll be here all the weekend.

R: How – can we just take a moment, just to take a poll of the audience: How are our dead dog jokes doing? Good?

J: Yes!

(''applause'')

R: OK. All right. Yeah.

J: You know what? I didn't know until we researched this item that it was a one-way mission.

R: Yeah.

E: Mm-hmm.

J: That's really nasty.

S: Well, the capsule returned.

(''laughter'')

E: Yeah, well –

S: About 162 days later, it burned up in the atmosphere. But, yeah, they never intended to bring Laika back.

J: No, they actually were going to euthanize her with poison food after the tenth day, I think, right?

R: This is seriously the worst item ever. What was I thinking when I picked it?

S: There – there's Laika.

E: Aww. Aww.

R: Oh yeah! I didn't pick it! Steve forced me to!

E: But, we'd never know who this dog was if it didn't go on Sputnik 2, right? I mean, this would be an otherwise – another animal.

R: No, yeah, and I'm sure Laika appreciates the fame she gets from ''beyond the grave''.

E: She got her fifteen minutes.

== In Memorium ==
=== Paul Kurtz (3:45) ===
* 1925-2012

S: Well, we are going to start the new segment of the show with an ''in memoriam''. We do like to, on the ''Skeptic's Guide'', pause to remember those members of the skeptical community who have passed, and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] died several days ago, just the day before the organizers were coming down to the conference. He died on Sunday. He was 85 years old. It was 1925 to 2012, so that is 86. I can do math. (''audience laughter'') You'll know why i was confused in a moment.

R: 'Cause you're terrible at math?

S: Yes. So, before we get the show started, Ron Lindsay and Kendrick Frazier talked about Paul Kurtz. You know, he was one of the giants of the skeptical movement, of the skeptical community. You know, he was largely responsible for organizing the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, founding Prometheus Books, CFI, [http://www.secularhumanism.org/ Secular Humanism]. He was an academic, a philosopher. He really gave a lot of weight to the movement early on. He made it to that – he broke it to that next level. It wasn't that, you know, before he came on board. So he has to be remembered for that. We did have some interactions with Paul along the years. The first year that we started – (''audience cooing'')

R: Baby Steve!

E: Aww.

S: I was a little younger back then.

R: He's three years old there.

B: He's only half-grey there.

S: (''laughing'') I'm only half-grey!

E: A little less grey, yep.

S: You can mark my age by my greyness up until about ten years ago, when i went totally grey. Right when we got started, in 1996, you know, CSICOP, now CSI, you know, they were the big national skeptical organization. They'd definitely – They took us under their wing, you know, gave us their support, their local membership list, so that we could get our movement going. And i remember meeting Paul at the first World Skeptics Conference, and he was immediately—like, you know, your grandfather—like, you know, very, very comfortably took on that air of being a mentor. It's like, "Yeah, this is great. You're welcome to the skeptical movement." So i definitely remember him fondly in that way. A few years later, Paul organized a meeting of the local skeptical groups. In the picture here you can see me again with Bob, Perry, and Evan. The four of us came up together –

J: Now, if i remember correctly, Rebecca, you and i were off being badass somewhere else, right?

R: I think that's what was happening, yeah.

S: – and, i think, in the foreground, that's Colonel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Nickell Joe Nickell], isn't it?

E: Colonel.

S: Yeah, he had broke his leg in Spain, or something?

R: Round of applause for Colonel Joe Nickell!

E: I remember that.

(''applause'')

S: Joe actually is going to come up, and he's going to read a poem that he wrote, i believe, about Paul.

JN: Paul was a great supporter of the arts, and i hope he would have liked this. The poem is called "Book of Seasons: An elegy". (''Uncertain re: permission to reproduce poem'')

S: Thank you, Joe.

=== Leon Jaroff (7:34) ===
* 1926-2012

S: This same weekend, Saturday before the show, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_(magazine) Leon Jaroff] also died. ''He'' was 85, hence my confusion. So, Leon Jariff—not a big name in the skeptical community recently, and if you ask, you know, people at conventions like this if they knew who he was – I mean, in fact, right before the show Rebecca said to me, "Who's Leon Jaroff?"

R: (''indignant gasp'')

S: Sorry, Rebecca.

(''audience laughter'')

S: But he was perhaps one of the most skeptical journalists that we have had.

B: Yeah.

S: He was the science columnist for ''Time Magazine''. It was he who said, "You know, popularizing science is important, you know, we should start a science-dedicated magazine." And that was ''Discover Magazine''. That was him. He was not afraid to be a hard-nosed skeptic when writing about scientific issues. So, for example, when writing about chiropractors, [http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,213482,00.html he wrote],

<blockquote>
Chiropractors also employ a bewildering variety of weird practices to diagnose their patients. Some use applied kinesiology, a muscle test that supposedly can diagnose allergies and diseased organs. Hair analysis and iris readings are commonplace in the profession. Even sillier are many of the treatments that chiropractors use and recommend: homeopathic potions, colon irrigation, magnetic therapy, enzyme pills, colored-light therapy, and something called "balancing body energy," among other mystical procedures with undocumented effects.
</blockquote>

S: That's from a mainstream journalist writing in ''Time Magazine''. Do we see this kind of thing today? I don't think so.

B: Nope.

(''audience applause'')

S: So, you know, we do have to, I think, also note the support that Jaroff gave to such a good science journalism, and that kind of hard-nosed, skeptical science journalism is definitely something we miss. That's a void that, I think, that we in the skeptical community have to fill, but, unfortunately, it is a void.

== News Items ==
=== Big Bang Conference at CERN (9:31)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19870036 Big Bang and religion mixed in Cern debate]

S: Rebecca –

R: Yes!

S: – this is a different quote. It's not as good a quote.

<blockquote>
Science in isolation is great for producing stuff, but not so good for producing ideas.
</blockquote>

R: Mm-hmm.

S: Who said that?

R: That was said by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Pinsent Andrew Pinsent] at the Ramsey Center for Science and Religion. What I particularly liked about this quote is that it is completely reversed – it is the exact opposite of what I would have suggested.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I would say that science is actually really good at ideas, but, in order to produce stuff, you have to add something else. You know, like, they might be able to figure out lasers, but to make a CD player you need a marketing executive.

S: Or death ray.

R: Thank you. Yeah, of course. Why didn't I go there first?

(''laughter'')

R: Yeah, so, this quote comes from a recent article that the BBC produced: "Big Bang and religion mixed in CERN debates". Apparently, there was a conference recently that CERN held—you remember CERN, you know, the guys who, apparently, may have found –

J: Higgs!

R: – the Higgs boson.

S: A boson with Higgs-like properties.

R: A Higgs-like thing.

S: Boson, yeah.

R: A Higgish. I like "Higgish" –

B: "Higgish"?

R: – a little bit.

J: (''laughing'') "A little bit!"

S: "Higgy"?

B: (''singing, inaudible'') ''Higgy again."

R: So, yes. Apparently, I don't know the purpose – I don't know what, who dreamt this up, but what I'm thinking is that someone was concerned that they may have found a particle that many people know as the "God particle", and, so, they're concerned that they're going to be excommunicated or, you know, that people will rebel—religious people will rebel—against science. Basically, we'll have some sort of Dark Ages–esque thing happening, and, so, maybe somebody at CERN thought, "Well, we should have this conference where we talk about how religious people should be OK with the Higgs boson."

B: Mm-hmm.

R: So, those are the good intentions that I'm assuming are behind this conference that has speakers such as this. The quotes in here are pretty fun, and none of them have any amount of intelligence to them. Steve, you're the one who brought this one to my attention here –

S: Yes.

R: I'm interested in what – we've talked a little bit before about things like the Templeton Foundation, which is an organization that gives out a prize – gives out prizes to people who can explore science in a religious context, basically. And I'm a bit opposed to it. I feel like it's muddying the waters. I think we don't ''need'' to bring religion into what people are doing at CERN.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I think those two things are happily separated, but I'm interested in knowing your feelings on this.

S: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think trying to introduce theology into science is misguided. You know, this conference was specifically about the origin of the universe. So, it's not just about scientific issues in particular. I think the thinking, at least on the part of the theologians who were quoted about this conference, is that, well, you're talking about the origin of the universe. That's a really big question, and religion is about answering the really big questions—not science. Science is narrow and reductionist, and makes stuff, but can't really grapple with the big questions of our origins. And that's exactly incorrect, as you were saying. That's a complete knock to science. I mean, science is, in fact, the only human intellectual endeavor that ''can'' answer any empirical question about the origin of the universe.

R: Yeah.

J: So, was the conference, though, the scientists trying to appease religious people? The saying that –

R: Well, you know, apparently, this was – the conference was done on the part of CERN, according to BBC, and that's what I find troubling. I'm totally OK with a conference that religious people host, you know, and the topic might be "How do we –" you know, "How do we consider our theology now that we know ''X'', ''Y'', and ''Z''—now that science has discovered this? What does that mean for ''our'' belief system?" And I think that's fine, but, you know, apparently, the theologians who were there seem to think that this was a chance to ''debate'' the scientists –

J: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

R: – and, no! Why would you do that? Debate is completely the opposite direction of where you want to go.

S: It also – I mean, the quotes seem to me like a desperate grasp at relevance, trying to make it seem like they're – you know, that theology is still relevant to questions about origins of the universe, when, in fact, science has completely displaced it from that endeavor.

J: So, did it end up with, like, a fistfight? Like, what happened?

(''laughter'')

E: Science won.

R: I haven't found any evidence of any arrests, so, apparently –

S: There were no fisticuffs?

J: That really must've been awkward as hell, though, right? Like, they're like, sitting there, like, after a whole day, and they're like, "Uh, OK, it's over now."

E: Something tells me they're not going to be doing this again. They're going to learn from this.

S: I don't know.

R: Well, I mean, it's actually not even – like, I wish it had been that exciting. But, instead, it just seems like it was really ''boring'' –

E: Yeah.

R: – and nobody came to ''any'' conclusions. Because you ''can't'', you know?

S: Yeah.

R: You're just having a discussion of, like, well, you know, "But what don't we know?"

=== Italian Earthquake Scientists Convicted (14:57)===
* [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/22/us-italy-earthquake-court-idUSBRE89L13V20121022 Italian scientists convicted over earthquake warning]

S: Now, we're trying to keep – we like to keep our live shows really light –

(''laughter'')

E: So far, so good.

S: So, we thought we'd talk about a horrible earthquake that killed over three hundred people.

E: Yeah, let's go there.

R: Good intro. Good intro there.

S: But there's actually a better story embedded in that. There were six Italian scientists, who were recently convicted of manslaughter –

B: Yeah.

S: – for failure to properly communicate the warnings about the upcoming L'Aquila earthquake in 2009. Yeah, we've been following this story, you know, since it happened. The quick version is that there were a number of small tremors in this very earthquake-prone part of Italy, and the geologists—the local geologists—you know, were following it. And their opinion was that, well, these tremors are very common. Most such tremors are not followed by major quakes. Most major quakes are not preceded by these kinds of tremors. So, the probability of a major quake occurring is not particularly higher, you know, now, just because of these tremors, than at any time, and, therefore, there's no cause for alarm. Now, they were specifically asked during a press conference, "Should we panic?" You know, "Should we evacuate?" And they said "No. There's no reason to evacuate. Stay at home and drink a glass of wine."

B: Steve, was this about a year ago that we covered this?

S: 2009. 2009 –

B: Oh, wow. (''inaudible'')

S: – so, was the quake, and then the court trial started about a year ago, and now the decision came down that the six scientists were convicted to six years – I think six years in prison and something like, you know, millions of dollars in damages for manslaughter—for the deaths of the people who didn't evacuate because they – of their reassurances that there was nothing to be worried about.

R: That's horrific.

J: Well, i, you know, to play devil's advocate real quick, if there was true negligence—like, if they didn't follow through with things that they needed to do, if they did a terrible job at analyzing the data, in a fashion that – where the data could have been analyzed better, or they actually weren't asking their peers for the information—i can understand if there was extreme negligence.

S: Right.

J: But, even still, like, that's very hard to prove, and I just don't understand –

S: Well, I mean, not really. The question is, was their opinion within the standard for their profession? That's—in my opinion—that's the only real question here. You can't be blamed for being wrong, right? You can't be blamed for a bad outcome if you were following the standard. Now, of course, scientists can't predict earthquakes. You can't predict when an earthquake is going to occur. That's the bottom line. What – every statement they said was truthful, you know, every factual statement. "These tremors do not necessarily mean that there's an earthquake coming, and they are not a reason to evacuate. We don't evacuate every city where there's tremors because there might be a major quake, because it's not that predictive." So, that was not negligent. No, and they weren't really being accused of negligence. They were basically being accused of poorly communicating to the public. It seems to be based on a lot of false premises about what scientists ''can know''—what an expert about, you know, an earthquake, a geologist, expert ''can know''.

R: Yeah, they've been convicted for not using a magical power they don't have.

S: Yeah.

R: They might as well have convicted all the psychics in Italy for not accurately predicting this earthquake.

J: I think we need to be careful—i don't disagree, of course. I don't think that these men should be going to jail for this at all—but it is an important thing to state that, I think, people should go to prison, or get in trouble ''legally'', if they are misrepresenting science or – right? So you see where I'm going with this.

S: Well, yeah. If you are –

J: If you're setting that premise—you're saying, "Hey, these guys screwed up, they didn't do what they were supposed to do, they didn't communicate to us the real possible outcomes here", whatever—and, like –

S: Yeah.

J: – I'll reiterate, I don't think that they should be going to jail—

B: Well, I don't agree –

J: —but, I do think, though, that that standard that that court set needs to be applied all the way down the ladder.

B: Yeah, but, Jay, like, someone saying that "I have a cure for cancer and it's scientifically proven" but it's a sham?

J: Exactly, right? So, if they're going to actually take those scientists out and say "You're done. You're not performing science anymore and you're going to jail for that bad decision or information you gave", well, hello! Then, you know, all of a sudden, a million lawsuits need to be filed.

S: But, it wasn't – to clarify, though, it wasn't ''bad'', it was just ''unlucky''. I mean, doctors encounter this all the time, you know. You are asked to decide, you know, what tests to order, what diagnoses a patient might have. There's a whole lot of liability involved with that. You can't be convicted of malpractice just because of a bad outcome if what you did was within the standard of care.

B: Right.

S: So, was the information they were giving to the public within the standard for the profession? If the answer is "yes", the fact that there was a low-probability earthquake the next week is not their fault.

E: Right.

S: It doesn't change the fact – you know, if they're saying there's a 99% chance that there's not going to be an earthquake, and then the 1% thing happens, they were still right –

J: Yeah.

S: – in saying that it was unlikely.

R: Yeah.

E: Didn't the evidence show, basically, that they performed correctly, essentially? They did not –

S: That's the consensus. I mean, so, there's worldwide outrage, especially among the scientific community (''inaudible'') –

B: This has got to be shot down in a higher court.

S: Yeah.

B: This can't – can't possibly stand.

E: I hope so.

S: Well, there's two appeals left. There's two appeals, and they will stay out of prison before those appeals. So, the United States National Academy of Science, the Royal Academy of Science—the Royal Society, rather—issued a joint statement saying that "that is why we must protest the verdict in Italy. If it becomes a precedent in law, it could lead to a situation in which scientists will be afraid to give expert opinion."

J: Yeah, that's devastating.

E: Mm-hmm.

S: So, it would have a chilling effect. What – you know, what geologist is going to, you know, talk to the public in Italy now, if you could wind up in jail and, you know, financially devastated, and your career devastated, because you can't predict the future, you know, because you don't have a crystal ball? It's insane. It's insane.

J: Yeah. To think that they're going after these scientists, and they're not going after the rampant quackery throughout –

S: Well, there's that, too.

E: I wonder how much pressure they came under from, like, the families, the survivors, of this terrible, terrible devastation –

J: Oh yeah, they had to hang someone.

E: – and I imagine they put a lot of pressure on politicians and other people in order to hold ''somebody'' accountable.

J: They have to. They had to send someone down the river for that.

B: Did they have a trial?

S: Yeah.

B: Did they have witnesses and experts coming in?

S: Yeah. Yep.

B: I'd love to know the details of what exactly happened, because how could –

(''laughter'')

S: So, we'll see if the worldwide backlash has an effect. I mean, again, they do have two appeals left, so we'll definitely follow it.

=== Whale Makes Human Sounds (21:35)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20026938 Beluga whale 'makes human-like sounds']

S: All right, Rebecca, so, we have a cute animal –

R: Thank you.

S: – we're going to talk about now.

J: This is a happy one!

R: Just tell me this narwhal or whatever is alive.

S: It's a whale.

E: It's alive and well.

S: It's a beluga whale.

B: It sort of looks like a narwhal.

R: Tell me this beluga is alive!

E: That's NOC the beluga. They're very much alive.

R: It's not a beluga?

E: "NOC". N-O-C.

S: "NOC". NOC the beluga.

R: Oh! "That's NOC."

(''laughter'')

R: I was about to say, "No, ''that is a beluga''."

S: Sounds like a children's song.

E: It does sound like a children's –

S: Evan, sing it.

E: No.

S: OK.

J: Don't change it! Please don't –

E: If my daughter was here, maybe. But, no. So, what's important about NOC the beluga? Well, OK, so, picture this: You are part of the National Marine Mammal Foundation, OK, and you're in the tank, swimming around with the whales and stuff, and, all of a sudden, you hear somebody—you hear a voice—call your name. Something to the effect that – "Get out of the water! Get out of the water!" So, you're in the tank and you come up and you say, "OK, who told me to get out of the water? Who told me to get out of the water?" And the other scientists and people are looking around you like, "Nobody? What the heck are you talking about?" And, he's like, "Well, I definitely ''heard'' that!" Well, what did he actually hear? Well, apparently, NOC the beluga made some noises very reminiscent of human noises. Beluga whales are, you know, incredible creatures. Their calls – They're known as the canaries of the sea. They have a very high-frequency, high-pitched tone to their noises that they make, but they make lots of different kinds of noises. They can emit up to eleven different kinds of sounds—crackles, whistles, trills, squawks—all sorts of things. But, it's been rumored that these whales can emit noises that sound like humans talking. And, for the first time, they've actually recorded NOC the whale making these noises, and they have it on tape. And we have it on tape.

R: Nah.

(''NOC makes unnervingly human-sounding noises'')

R: Did he maybe just swallow a kazoo?

(''laughter'')

J: Everybody has a drunk neighbor that makes those noises.

(''laughter'')

E: Oh, gosh. Who knows what the heck he was saying? You know, dolphins have been taught to mimic noises that kind of sound like human voices, but, before this, there's been no record of an animal ''spontaneously'' coming up and making these kinds of noises. This is the first evidence, the first hard evidence we have of it.

R: Here's – I have a theory. I have a theory. I have a theory that – so, whales, in general, are incredibly intelligent –

E: Oh yeah.

R: – possibly as smart as us, but they don't want thumbs, or any way to talk to us –

E: Or fire.

R: – and I feel like they do, basically – That's true. No, I saw Spongebob once. There was fire under the sea. I think it can be done.

S: Yep, but they don't have nanotechnology, though.

R: They don't. So, my theory is that whales are basically, like – they have – it's like they have locked-in syndrome, you know? Where they're just –

J: Oh, no.

R: – super-intelligent, and there's all these people around them, and they're just messing with them –

J: So, he was screaming, actually –

R: Yeah! And, so, he's been like, his whole life, he's been in this stupid little – like, he's in captivity, right? So, he's been in this stupid little aquarium, and he's just, like, "I hate all of you! And I'm going to will myself to tell you, because you're too stupid to understand!"

E: So, basically, what's going on here is, the whale has learned to change – rapidly change pressure within its naval cavity in order to create these sounds. And, it hasn't – the whale is able to over-inflate what's known as its vestibular sac in its blowhole, which is normally acts to stop water from basically coming in. So, the whale is going through a lot of, you know, effort, essentially, to try to make these noises. And I'm sure they're going to be trying to figure out exactly, you know, basically, ''why'' is the whale doing this?

S: Well, he just – this whale was – did spend his life in captivity –

E: Yeah.

S: – so, he did hear human speech a lot, and maybe he's just, to some extent, mimicking the sounds that he grew up hearing his whole life.

J: It's definitely – it definitely has a human sound to it, in the cadence and everything.

S: Yeah.

J: I mean, he's intelligent enough to mimic a human, which is really cool.

R: Yeah.

J: And, then, you always think, you know, if he can mimic a human—if his brain is advanced that much—you know, maybe he –

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But, is he mimicking humans or making fun of humans? You know, like people make fun of other languages?

R: Yeah, he's just like "Weh! Weh! Weh! This is what you sound like!"

E: Yeah. You stupid bald monkey and (''inaudible'')! Get out of here!

B: Sounds like a false dichotomy.

=== PANDAS Controversy (26:18)===
* [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/a-pandas-story/ A PANDAS Story]

S: So, we're going to talk about – going from talking about beluga whales to talking about PANDAS! Except, we're not talking about pandas, because we're talking about –

E: Wait.

R: Stop toying with my emotions, Steve!

S: I had to put a cute picture of a panda up there for you, Rebecca. We are talking about pediatric autoimmune –

R: It makes sense.

S: – neuropsychiatric disorder associated with –

E: I didn't know PANDA was an acronym. Cool!

R: Steve, I miss the panda.

S: – streptococcal infection—or, PANDAS. See? There's a panda.

(''laughter, cooing'')

E: Aww!

R: Yay.

S: We're talking about PANDAS –

E: Aww.

R: Boo.

J: Oh.

E: That's worse.

S: – which is a legitimately controversial medical diagnosis! So, essentially, what happens is, children suddenly develop ticks—like Tourette syndrome—and psychiatric disorders—obsessive–compulsive disorder—and it is thought that, in some cases, that it is actually – the inciting event is an infection—bacteria—streptococcal infection. Now, of course, it's always difficult to establish the reality of a new disease. Unless you get all your ducks in a row, and all the, you know, pathology all adds up, it's sometimes difficult to identify a legitimate new syndrome and to prove that – cause and effect. So, correlation is one thing. As we know, correlation is not ''necessarily'' causation. And, so, the syndrome exists. There are – the number of physicians who have identified the sudden onset psychiatric – neuropsychiatric disorder, and in some cases it is temporally associated with a streptococcal infection. But that's not the same thing as saying that the strep infection ''caused'' the neuropsychiatric syndrome. So, that's – and there's the controversy. Now, of course, we live in the modern Internet age. So, as soon as a scientist says, "I think that there's this syndrome—I want to call it PANDAS—and – sort of, you know, a psychiatric syndrome provoked by a bacterial infection", of course, there are now support groups, and there's groups on the Internet, and there's patient groups supporting this diagnosis before the science is even settled. And, then, of course, once that happens, when you try to do more science, or have any kind of discussion about whether or not this is a real syndrome, you have parents and patient groups and advocacy groups, you know, calling you all kinds of nasty names and saying there's a conspiracy against people with PANDAS, it's all the insurance companies and Big Pharma and evil doctors or whatever. So, that's the situation that we're in the middle of right now, unfortunately, is that, before the science is settled, you know, there's the scientific controversy, then there's the public controversy. This came to the media attention recently because of a 16-year-old girl called Elizabeth Wray. She developed, you know, a syndrome like PANDAS with ticks and psychological disorders, was diagnosed by a physician with PANDAS, and then was transferred to Boston's Children's Hospital for – presumably for further treatment of PANDAS. Now, the story that is going around the PANDAS community is that once she got to Boston University—or Boston Children's Hospital—she was told – the parents were told, "We don't believe that PANDAS is real – that it exists", and then they essentially admitted their daughter to the psychiatric unit and started treating her with psychiatric medications. Now, I don't know if that's true, because the doctors and the hospital are not telling their side of the story because of patient confidentiality. So, we don't know what their side of the story is. We only know the parents' side of the story, filtered through the PANDAS community. Unfortunately, now there's – this story has taken on a life of its own. There's a Free Elizabeth Wray movement going on within the PANDAS community, they're telling all kinds of horror stories about Boston Children's Hospital, and, you know, we can't verify any of it. What's interesting in reading about it is that each side has their narrative—and I wrote about this on Science-Based Medicine—because one of the things that – the ideas that we're wrestling with in the skeptical community is that—well, all right, we have, I think, a good approach to critical thinking, we understand a lot about self-deception, about the nature of science and pseudoscience—but we don't always have a good story to tell the public, or we have a hard time convincing mainstream outlets that we have – that our story is an interesting and good one. You know, we have to really market our narrative—the skeptical narrative. When you read about stories like this, the PANDAS proponents have a really compelling emotional narrative. It may be total B.S.—i don't know—but it's very compelling. They have a story of a child suffering from an unusual disease, parents who just want to do what's right for her—I believe all those things are correct—and then they are, essentially, being abused by a dismissive and skeptical medical establishment who doesn't believe in this disease, and that is treating their child with perhaps harmful, you know, psychiatric medications. They even – this went to court. Apparently, the hospital thought that the parents were being negligent in not allowing them to give proper standard of care—psychiatric treatment—to their child, and they wanted to have custody taken away from the parents, and they wanted to admit Elizabeth to a locked psychiatric ward—again, not sure – I can't verify those from the hospital's side of things. A judge – a Massachusetts judge essentially made her a ward of the state while they sorted out what was going on, but they did not grant the hospital their request to treat her in the way that they wanted to. So, they essentially just – the state took her out of everybody's hands for a moment – for the moment. So, it's interesting. Of course, the PANDAS community, again, is up in arms, you know. The court essentially took custody away from these parents that are only trying to do what's right for their daughter. But, of course, you could see the other narrative—you know, let's assume that the physicians think that—even if you think – whether or not you think PANDAS really exists—they think that she has a psychiatric illness, the parents are in denial, they're pursuing this false diagnosis, and they're, you know, refusing standard medical care. That's a story, too.

B: What if you just pulled out the whole strep association, and just treat it like a "pandisorder"? Is their beef that it's associated with strep, and they don't think there's any association? Why don't they just treat it like a neuropsychiatric disorder –

S: Yeah.

B: – and forget about the whole strep association?

S: Well, because the strep association would lead you to treat with things like antibiotics. So, that's the question: Should you treat it with antibiotics, or should you treat her like a psychiatric (''inaudible'') patient?

J: Why not both? I mean, why wouldn't you –

S: Well, she has had at least one round of antibiotics. You can also treat it like an autoimmune disease, with, like, intravenous globulin, for example. So, I mean, these are real medical questions. Do we treat it like an infection, do we treat it like a post-infectious auto-immune disease, or do we treat it like a psychiatric disorder? Those are real questions.

J: Steve, are you saying pandas don't exist? Let me just get this straight.

(''laughter'')

S: So, well, I did – to give a serious answer to your sarcastic question, I did –

R: My favorite kind.

S: – take the opportunity – I'm good that way. I'm good that way. I did take the opportunity just to familiarize myself with the PANDAS literature—again, I always emphasize, I'm no an expert in this, but I can read the literature and give my opinion like a science journalist—i think it's genuinely controversial. When I read the research, there's lots of – the ducks are not in a row. So, when you do things like treat kids who apparently have PANDAS with antibiotics in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, they don't necessarily improve. And, if you look for the antibodies that are supposed to be there, they don't necessarily correlate with the disease onset or with the existence of strep. So –

B: So, this is clearly not like autism and vaccines. It's just more complicated than that.

S: So, no. So, right. So, autism and vaccines, like, I would say, that's been studied enough to say that autism's – that autism is not caused by vaccines. We can say that. We can make the negative statement. I cannot make the negative statement that PANDAS does not exist, only that the research so far has not reached the threshold where we can agree that it does exist and that there is some actual negative data—there's some positive data, too—so it's legitimately controversial. It did remind me, though, of the chronic Lyme disease controversy—

R: Yeah.

S: —which is very common in New England—again, where they think that a number of symptoms, including neurological symptoms, can be caused by a bacterial infection and treated with antibiotics. And the same – there's a lot of overlap in those two communities, you know.

J: Steve, are you saying that the public has unrealistic expectations?

S: Well, I think – it's partly that. I mean, I think the public is uncomfortable with the uncertainty, and they like this sort of hero–villain narrative, so they paint the medical community as the villains, and—except for those maverick physicians who understand. They're Lyme-literate, or they understand PANDAS, so they're the heroes—and, then, the insurance companies don't want to pay for, you know, over-and-over recurrent courses of IV antibiotics, so they're the villains, you know. They're not—I'm not defending insurance companies, but sometimes they actually – sometimes they're right. They don't want to pay for things that are not science-based or evidence-based. So, it's complicated. And, you know, how do we – so, how do we deal with a child with this disorder when we don't know what the best scientific answer is—we don't know if it's autoimmune, infectious, or psychiatric? We just have to, you know, do the best we can—and there may be different physicians who would take different approaches—but to portray it as "PANDAS definitely exists. If you don't believe in it, you're dismissive and you're mean and evil, or you're protecting some kind of Big Pharma grant that you're getting"—they always bring that up—rather than saying, "You know, we really want to know the right answer, but we just haven't found it yet. It's still – it's legitimately controversial."

J: Yeah, I think what you're saying does confirm what I was thinking, is that the public wants an answer, science is not yet done figuring this one out, and –

S: Yeah. Like the earthquake one, right?

J: Yeah.

S: Sometimes the answer is, "We don't know yet", you know. "We need to do more research". In medicine, we have to make decisions with imperfect, you know, information, so, you know.

J: Wouldn't it be typical, too – like, let's say that this is happening over and over again –

S: Yeah.

J: – like, at some point, some doctors are going to come up with different ideas, they're going to try it out, you know. The trial-and-error process happens, and—i hate to say it, but—this girl is probably going to be one of the people that gets tested on with new ideas.

S: Well, I mean – well, if you're really testing then you should be doing a research protocol. If you're just applying the best knowledge that we have to an individual patient, that's – a certain amount of trial and error with that that's not really experimentation. So, there is a difference there. So, I don't know. The other interesting question that I'm kind of alluding to is, what role do the patient or the advocacy groups play? I think, a lot of times, that they are helpful in raising awareness for a disease or a disorder and raising funding, and advocating for patients. You know, I've seen, I think, there's a lot of very effective, very good patient advocacy groups out there. But, sometimes, they put their nickel down on a specific scientific answer, and that's not their job.

J: Yeah.

S: It's not their job to predict or demand that science give them the answer they want. And, you know, unfortunately, some people want the answer to be "an infection"—not "genes", not, you know, "We don't know".

J: Yeah. It's curable. That's the one they want.

S: Of course, who – that's the answer I would want to have! "It's something outside that is, you know, foreign, that can be cured, and that can reverse my child to the way that they were". Who – every parent wants that to be the answer, but sometimes you – you know, you have to step back from what you want and listen to the evidence. That's the – that's the scientist's, that's the physician's job, you know. You should just let them do their job, you know.

J: All right, so, I want to bring up a quick side point on this.

S: Yeah.

J: So, as an example, let's say, fifty years ago, let's say this was happening. What stance do you think the public would have differently than what we're seeing today?

S: It's the same, and this ''did'' happen fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, you know, she would be diagnosed with neurosyphilis—maybe not somebody who was sixteen, but that was the stand-in for what we now would, you know, the same subculture would diagnose with chronic Lyme. There were believers in that. There were physicians who believed in treatments like chelation therapy, you know, and science proved it wrong, and they said, "Well, we don't care, we're going to still do it. We're going to come up with – We're just going to keep coming up with special pleading and alternate theories, and form our own societies and our own – and just keep doing it, and say that it's all a conspiracy."

J: Mm-hmm.

S: So, but, I think that it's just the turnaround time is so much faster because of the Internet. Like, another example: CCSVI, right? The alleged blockage in the veins that drained blood from the brain, causing multiple sclerosis. It's that – that whole process—of Dr. Zamboni proposing this entity and a treatment, to it being researched, to it being refuted, to, you know, patient advocacy groups springing up and calling for conspiracies and calling for research and demanding that science give them the answer that they want—all has taken place within a few years. We've seen that cycle happen right before our eyes. So, the Internet is just making it happen a lot quicker and a lot bigger, I think. But it's always been this way.

J: So do you have any ideas on what we could do? Could the skeptical community do anything to help this (''inaudible'')?

S: Well, I think what we do is, we discuss the issue from a science, logical, critical thinking point of view, you know. We point out the role of science in this, and we, I think, we try to bring the public discourse to a level that can deal with it in a more productive way, rather than the conspiracy mongering, sort of lowest-common-denominator that it would otherwise sink to.

J: Yeah.

=== Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44)===
* pnd

{{transcribing
|transcriber = Cornelioid
}}

S: Well, let's move on. Jay, we're talking about how the media presents stories about paranormal activities.

J: Yeah, this is interesting. So, a professor decided to – Professor Brewer decided that—because what we're seeing over the years is a very obvious interest, in the general public, to news articles, and to TV shows, that talk about ghosts; and, you know, we've all seen the ''Ghost Hunter'' TV show, and, to people like us, at best, we watch it, and it's fun, right? 'Cause it's ridiculous and entertaining, and we like to see people from our perspective—a skeptical perspective—they're acting foolishly. But, there are a lot of people that are watching this, and they're riveted. Like, they really love it and they think a lot of it's real—and, i'm sure, to a certain degree, i can't say everyone that watches it and thinks everything about it is real—but, in the end, there's a huge entertainment factor there, and, unfortunately, to us skeptics, we feel like there's a lot of people that simply believe it, and that's their favorite entertainment. And i know a lot of people—I'm friends with a lot of people—that literally have active discussions on Facebook all the time, that i dip into, that are talking about the latest TAPS show. We'll be, "Can you believe it?" and "I knew that place was haunted!", and they're like, you know, getting whooped up.

S: I don't get it. I just don't get it. Nothing happens!

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

R: That's not true! That's not true.

E:

S: But they never find a ghost.

R: Steve, Steve. Did you feel that?

(''laughter'')

R: That happens! That happens all the time.

(''applause'')

R: They feel so much.

J: The thing is, you know –

S: I want to see a full, floating torso drift across the camera lens. Then i'll be impressed.

B: I still won't believe it.

S: No, but at least it'll be entertaining.

J: A lot of the shows, though, they're all right on the cusp, you know? They're always ''just'' seeing something, or something ''just'' falls over, you know? Or there's a noise from upstairs, or whatever, and it's never – they never give you that.

R: This, actually – this came up—tomorrow i'll be talking about the [http://paranormalroadtrip.org/ paranormal road trip] i just went on with Jon Ronson and Richard Wiseman that got us here—and, at one of the stops, we were at a – we did talk to someone in a "haunted museum", and she was telling us that "the ghost hunters were there, and it was very exciting because there was a noise in the attic, and there were steps (''step sounds'') even though nobody was up there, and so the ghost hunter ran over and climbed up the ladder and looked into the attic, and, just then, a lady, dressed all in white, came ''flying at him'', and he shrieked in horror and fell down the ladder, and it was all really dramatic", and we were just completely blown away, obviously. We were riveted. And we said, "We cannot ''wait'' to see that footage!" "Actually, i mean, it was so good, they didn't get that on camera. No, all the cameras were down in another room somewhere."

R: "There's literally no evidence "

S: Ed Warren. We were investigating Ed Warren, and he told us this story of being in a haunted house, and they had a local news crew over there, and, for like two hours, they videotaped things flying around the room, you know, really impressive, you know, smoking-gun evidence of paranormal activity. We're like, "Great! Can we see that footage?"

J: "Yeah!"

S: "You know what? They taped over it for the news segment later that night."

(''laughter'')

S: Go – go figure. Stupid news crew.

J: So, i – i'm going to ask a couple of questions that i want you guys to not answer right now, but just think about it, 'cause these are pretty obvious questions, but i think they're interesting. "Why do people believe, or like to believe, in the paranormal? What's the attraction?" It's an interesting question if you think about it. There are people who ''really'' seek it out and love it. And there's something exciting about it, something kind of visceral about it. To my mind—to a skeptical mind—i don't have a connection to it. I just don't see what that allure is, other than, maybe—because i do like horror movies, and i do like to get scared. I love being actually scared in a movie theater. It doesn't happen that often, but when it does happen it's very thrilling—and, maybe they're just having a lot of those thrilling moments. It's easier for them to get scared.

R: But, also, i mean, don't you think, maybe, it's got something to do with the fact that, maybe, we're not going to rot in the ground and die and never see our loved ones again? maybe?

J: I'm not going to say no, but when i think about it, there's something thrilling about it. I'm not thinking, as i'm being thrilled in a horror movie, "Oh, i'm defying death by being thrilled right now!" It's not happening. I'm just – there is something – it's like eating something really spicy that hurts.

B:

J: It hurts, but it's good at the same time, right?

E: Uh.

S: To a lot of people, definitely, evidence of ghosts is evidence of the afterlife. That's the appeal.

R: Yeah, and when we talk to people who describe their own experiences often—they're talking about Grandma and Grandpa and whatnot coming back to them and telling them that it's all OK—you know, and they're very comforting messages –

J: Yeah, which is why

E: Which is why they watch these shows. It reinforces these positions that these people have, you know, and they derive a certain, you know, need –

J: I wonder, though, because those shows are so bad! They're so bad.

R: No, no, no! Personally, i would derive a lot of happiness from knowing that my dearly beloved grandmother, who i adored when i was young—she died when i was young—i would get so much happiness knowing that she was just screwing around with asshole ghosthunters on TV. Just, like, brushing past them and disappearing whenever the cameras come out. That would give me a lot of satisfaction, knowing that.

J: Maybe the skeptical version of it is watching a YouTube video of Hitchens just tearing some moron apart, right? That's our version of that?

E: That releases

J: That makes me believe in something, right?

E: Yeah.

J: It gives me a thrill, but – OK, anyways. So, there is an article we're talking about here. So, Dr. Paul Brewer, who is – teaches at the University of Deleware, developed a study that was recently published in the journal ''Science: Communication'' that examines the influence of the media on the public's perception of the paranormal. So, here's his test: He took four news articles that were similar to each other, but they had significant differences in some of the details. The essence of it was, he had an article on one end of the spectrum that described a paranormal effect with a paranormal investigator, and they were using instruments to measure things, or whatever. And, then, as you go down to the fourth article, the fourth article gets very descriptive about using, you know, faux scientific language to make the paranormal investigators sound scientifically-minded, and using scientific tools. And, what he found was, the more of the faux science that was in the article, the more that the people believed that the paranormal accounts were true. You know, it's kind of a kick in the gut for us skeptics, because—and for us scientists, because—they're using our lingo, and our vernacular, and the way that we go about presenting data, and they're fooling people with it—because, i think, the general public is trained to a certain degree to recognize scientific language and recognize the formality of science—and they're using that—and i don't know how deliberate it is. Maybe they figured it out for the TV shows, that, you know, "hey, the more we B.S. this, the more we make this meter look cool and we throw in, you know, technical jargon, the more people that are going to be interested in our TV show"—

B: I think they also believe it themselves, Jay. They think they're being scientific.

J: Yeah.

E: That's right, yeah.

B: That's a big part of it as well.

E: You bet they do.

J: So, Brewer said it wasn't just any story about paranormal investigators that made people believe in ghosts and haunted houses. It was a story about how they were scientific. So, he puts a big emphasis on the science there. And, the good news was that he said that they might look at this and say, "Well, all it takes is this sprinkle of some acronyms in there, and wave around a cool-looking thing that beeps, and suddenly people believe in ghosts and haunted houses." Now, the one cool thing about his research was, he also found that if, at the end of the article, there was a skeptical disclaimer that said "This is the skeptical perspective. This is why that investigation was wrong. This is the mistakes that they made and this is why these instruments are bogus."—if they threw that in there—it actually made the people believe in the claims a lot less.

R: What?

J: Yeah, it actually worked.

R: The thing that we're always complaining about—that, like, one sentence that presents –

S: The token skeptic?

E: The token skeptic, yeah.

R: – the entirety of skeptical opinion—that actually does make a difference?

J: Well, i don't want to – i don't want to say that the token skeptic 30-second B.S. blurb that they cut on most of the TV shows that we see works. The way that he presented it, it seemed a little bit like it had more teeth. It wasn't a quick thing. I think it was a little bit more of a takedown.

S: So, there was a series of studies about ten years ago, where they looked at the same thing—at the presentation of pseudoscience in a documentary and its effect on people's belief in the subject matter, like belief in UFOs or alien visitation—and they found some similar things in that, when it was presented scientifically, that absolutely increased belief. They also found that if, at any point in time, it was said—there was any kind of disclaimer saying—the following claims are true, or that the following claims may or may not be true, or whatever—anything positive or negative—reduced belief, or reduced the increase in belief, following the segment. So, anything that triggered people's questioning about, is it true or is it not true, was actually a good thing. But they found the opposite in that the token skepticism at the end—a scientists coming in at the end and saying, you know, "We've evaluated this, and it's not true", ''increased'' belief in the thing, because it lent legitimacy to the whole enterprise—the very fact that a scientist was spending their time and giving their attention to it.

J: Oh, yeah.

S: So –

B: Is that a cultural change –

S: Well, maybe –

B: – or is it the study?

S: Well, all right. I don't know. I don't know what the answer to that is. But, one possible interpretation may be that the ''token'' ineffective skepticism actually has a negative effect in raising belief in the paranormal because it's lending false legitimacy, but if you give ''effective'', you know, analysis—

B: Yeah.

S: —effective skeptical analysis—maybe you could reverse that and bring it back down.

J: Yeah, from from what the article said, it was, i think, an equal paragraph on the skeptical perspective –

S: Yes.

J: – and, specifically –

S: We really do have to argue for equal time and for getting the skeptical

J: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

S: – not the talking head blurb token skepticism may not – may still be counterproductive.

J: And the thing that he said was that there was – the article, the paragraph, did a takedown of the people that were claiming to be scientists.

S: Mm-hmm.

J: So, it stripped their expertise away, in essence.

S: Yeah. Yeah.

J: So, you know, i think it's interesting. I think that we're hard-wired for these things. I find, unfortunately, more and more TV programs—hey, you guys noticing, what's with the reality TV? Like, why is reality TV taking over television? I mean, have you asked yourself that question?

S: 'Cause it's cheap.

E: It's cheap.

(''applause'')

== Live Q&A (51:06) ==
* Questions from the CSICon audience

== Science or Fiction (55:19) ==

S: Item number one. A new study finds that astronauts who spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. Item number two. Scientists have discovered the first feathered dinosaur in the western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers. And item number three. Researchers find that, at the molecular level, evolutionary changes can be highly predictable.

== Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:08:11) ==
<blockquote>Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.</blockquote>
J: Paul Kurtz!

{{Outro1}}

== References ==
<references/>

{{Navigation}}

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-09T05:17:19Z

Cornelioid: /* Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44) */

{{LatestEpisode}}
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|episodeDate = 3rd November 2012 
|episodeIcon = File:KurtzPic2.jpg 
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|qowText = Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality. 
|qowAuthor = [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] 
|}}

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

RW: – a live edition of my favorite podcast and radio show. So, we're going to have Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Jay Novella, Even Bernstein, and – and a woman –

(''laughter'')

RW: – join us. It's the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe!

(''applause'')

S: Hello, and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

(''applause'')

S: Today is Thursday, October 25th, 2012, and we are live from [http://www.csiconference.org/ CSICon 2012].

(''applause'')

Joining me, as always, are Bob Novella –

B: Hey everybody!

(''cheers'')

S: – Rebecca Watson –

R: Hello, everyone!

(''cheers'')

''audience member'': I love you, Rebecca!

R: I love you, too!

S: – Jay Novella...Jay Novella –

J: Wooooo! Rebecca, yeah!

(''cheers'')

R: I love you, Jay!

S: – and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hello, Nashville!

(''cheers'')

S: So, how're you guys doing? How do you like Nashville?

J: It's awesome. I didn't – I thought people were going to literally be playing guitar when I got off the airplane.

B: Oh, come on, Jay.

S: Yeah, in the airport, you know?

J: Yeah.

== This Day in Skepticism (1:28) ==
November 3, 1957 Sputnik 2 launched

S: So, Rebecca, you always start us off with a This Day in Science and Skepticism. This show will be going up on November 3rd, so, did anything happen that day?

R: Nope.

(''laughter'')

B: Ever?

R: Oh, all right. One thing happened. One thing happened! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_2 Sputnik 2] happened.

S: ''Sputnik 2: The Revenge''.

(''laughter'')

R: ''Son of Sputnik''.

S: ''Son of Sputnik''.

J: ''Son of Sputnik''!

R: That's right. Sputnik 2 you might know as "the one that killed the puppy".

(''awwws'')

R: No? Aww, that's weird, 'cause I really thought that this would go over well at a live event! Yeah, Sputnik 2 is the craft that took Laika into orbit, Laika being the Soviet space dog who became the first animal in orbit—for about, like, 10 minutes, before she died.

E: Well, you know –

S: A couple of hours. It was a couple of hours. They thought he was going to survive for about ten days –

R: I think she's a "she".

S: – ''she'' was going to survive –

E: Eh.

R: Get it right, Steve!

S: You know, asexual Russian names, I mean, come on. But, they thought that Laika was going to survive for about ten days, but then they had a little mishap with the cooling system, and –

E: Oops.

S: Yeah. – got a little hot in the capsule—104 degrees, they said in (''inaudible'')

E: That'd be a hot dog. Yep.

(''groans'')

B: Oh, come on. My god.

E: Thank you. I'll be here all the weekend.

R: How – can we just take a moment, just to take a poll of the audience: How are our dead dog jokes doing? Good?

J: Yes!

(''applause'')

R: OK. All right. Yeah.

J: You know what? I didn't know until we researched this item that it was a one-way mission.

R: Yeah.

E: Mm-hmm.

J: That's really nasty.

S: Well, the capsule returned.

(''laughter'')

E: Yeah, well –

S: About 162 days later, it burned up in the atmosphere. But, yeah, they never intended to bring Laika back.

J: No, they actually were going to euthanize her with poison food after the tenth day, I think, right?

R: This is seriously the worst item ever. What was I thinking when I picked it?

S: There – there's Laika.

E: Aww. Aww.

R: Oh yeah! I didn't pick it! Steve forced me to!

E: But, we'd never know who this dog was if it didn't go on Sputnik 2, right? I mean, this would be an otherwise – another animal.

R: No, yeah, and I'm sure Laika appreciates the fame she gets from ''beyond the grave''.

E: She got her fifteen minutes.

== In Memorium ==
=== Paul Kurtz (3:45) ===
* 1925-2012

S: Well, we are going to start the new segment of the show with an ''in memoriam''. We do like to, on the ''Skeptic's Guide'', pause to remember those members of the skeptical community who have passed, and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] died several days ago, just the day before the organizers were coming down to the conference. He died on Sunday. He was 85 years old. It was 1925 to 2012, so that is 86. I can do math. (''audience laughter'') You'll know why i was confused in a moment.

R: 'Cause you're terrible at math?

S: Yes. So, before we get the show started, Ron Lindsay and Kendrick Frazier talked about Paul Kurtz. You know, he was one of the giants of the skeptical movement, of the skeptical community. You know, he was largely responsible for organizing the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, founding Prometheus Books, CFI, [http://www.secularhumanism.org/ Secular Humanism]. He was an academic, a philosopher. He really gave a lot of weight to the movement early on. He made it to that – he broke it to that next level. It wasn't that, you know, before he came on board. So he has to be remembered for that. We did have some interactions with Paul along the years. The first year that we started – (''audience cooing'')

R: Baby Steve!

E: Aww.

S: I was a little younger back then.

R: He's three years old there.

B: He's only half-grey there.

S: (''laughing'') I'm only half-grey!

E: A little less grey, yep.

S: You can mark my age by my greyness up until about ten years ago, when i went totally grey. Right when we got started, in 1996, you know, CSICOP, now CSI, you know, they were the big national skeptical organization. They'd definitely – They took us under their wing, you know, gave us their support, their local membership list, so that we could get our movement going. And i remember meeting Paul at the first World Skeptics Conference, and he was immediately—like, you know, your grandfather—like, you know, very, very comfortably took on that air of being a mentor. It's like, "Yeah, this is great. You're welcome to the skeptical movement." So i definitely remember him fondly in that way. A few years later, Paul organized a meeting of the local skeptical groups. In the picture here you can see me again with Bob, Perry, and Evan. The four of us came up together –

J: Now, if i remember correctly, Rebecca, you and i were off being badass somewhere else, right?

R: I think that's what was happening, yeah.

S: – and, i think, in the foreground, that's Colonel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Nickell Joe Nickell], isn't it?

E: Colonel.

S: Yeah, he had broke his leg in Spain, or something?

R: Round of applause for Colonel Joe Nickell!

E: I remember that.

(''applause'')

S: Joe actually is going to come up, and he's going to read a poem that he wrote, i believe, about Paul.

JN: Paul was a great supporter of the arts, and i hope he would have liked this. The poem is called "Book of Seasons: An elegy". (''Uncertain re: permission to reproduce poem'')

S: Thank you, Joe.

=== Leon Jaroff (7:34) ===
* 1926-2012

S: This same weekend, Saturday before the show, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_(magazine) Leon Jaroff] also died. ''He'' was 85, hence my confusion. So, Leon Jariff—not a big name in the skeptical community recently, and if you ask, you know, people at conventions like this if they knew who he was – I mean, in fact, right before the show Rebecca said to me, "Who's Leon Jaroff?"

R: (''indignant gasp'')

S: Sorry, Rebecca.

(''audience laughter'')

S: But he was perhaps one of the most skeptical journalists that we have had.

B: Yeah.

S: He was the science columnist for ''Time Magazine''. It was he who said, "You know, popularizing science is important, you know, we should start a science-dedicated magazine." And that was ''Discover Magazine''. That was him. He was not afraid to be a hard-nosed skeptic when writing about scientific issues. So, for example, when writing about chiropractors, [http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,213482,00.html he wrote],

<blockquote>
Chiropractors also employ a bewildering variety of weird practices to diagnose their patients. Some use applied kinesiology, a muscle test that supposedly can diagnose allergies and diseased organs. Hair analysis and iris readings are commonplace in the profession. Even sillier are many of the treatments that chiropractors use and recommend: homeopathic potions, colon irrigation, magnetic therapy, enzyme pills, colored-light therapy, and something called "balancing body energy," among other mystical procedures with undocumented effects.
</blockquote>

S: That's from a mainstream journalist writing in ''Time Magazine''. Do we see this kind of thing today? I don't think so.

B: Nope.

(''audience applause'')

S: So, you know, we do have to, I think, also note the support that Jaroff gave to such a good science journalism, and that kind of hard-nosed, skeptical science journalism is definitely something we miss. That's a void that, I think, that we in the skeptical community have to fill, but, unfortunately, it is a void.

== News Items ==
=== Big Bang Conference at CERN (9:31)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19870036 Big Bang and religion mixed in Cern debate]

S: Rebecca –

R: Yes!

S: – this is a different quote. It's not as good a quote.

<blockquote>
Science in isolation is great for producing stuff, but not so good for producing ideas.
</blockquote>

R: Mm-hmm.

S: Who said that?

R: That was said by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Pinsent Andrew Pinsent] at the Ramsey Center for Science and Religion. What I particularly liked about this quote is that it is completely reversed – it is the exact opposite of what I would have suggested.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I would say that science is actually really good at ideas, but, in order to produce stuff, you have to add something else. You know, like, they might be able to figure out lasers, but to make a CD player you need a marketing executive.

S: Or death ray.

R: Thank you. Yeah, of course. Why didn't I go there first?

(''laughter'')

R: Yeah, so, this quote comes from a recent article that the BBC produced: "Big Bang and religion mixed in CERN debates". Apparently, there was a conference recently that CERN held—you remember CERN, you know, the guys who, apparently, may have found –

J: Higgs!

R: – the Higgs boson.

S: A boson with Higgs-like properties.

R: A Higgs-like thing.

S: Boson, yeah.

R: A Higgish. I like "Higgish" –

B: "Higgish"?

R: – a little bit.

J: (''laughing'') "A little bit!"

S: "Higgy"?

B: (''singing, inaudible'') ''Higgy again."

R: So, yes. Apparently, I don't know the purpose – I don't know what, who dreamt this up, but what I'm thinking is that someone was concerned that they may have found a particle that many people know as the "God particle", and, so, they're concerned that they're going to be excommunicated or, you know, that people will rebel—religious people will rebel—against science. Basically, we'll have some sort of Dark Ages–esque thing happening, and, so, maybe somebody at CERN thought, "Well, we should have this conference where we talk about how religious people should be OK with the Higgs boson."

B: Mm-hmm.

R: So, those are the good intentions that I'm assuming are behind this conference that has speakers such as this. The quotes in here are pretty fun, and none of them have any amount of intelligence to them. Steve, you're the one who brought this one to my attention here –

S: Yes.

R: I'm interested in what – we've talked a little bit before about things like the Templeton Foundation, which is an organization that gives out a prize – gives out prizes to people who can explore science in a religious context, basically. And I'm a bit opposed to it. I feel like it's muddying the waters. I think we don't ''need'' to bring religion into what people are doing at CERN.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I think those two things are happily separated, but I'm interested in knowing your feelings on this.

S: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think trying to introduce theology into science is misguided. You know, this conference was specifically about the origin of the universe. So, it's not just about scientific issues in particular. I think the thinking, at least on the part of the theologians who were quoted about this conference, is that, well, you're talking about the origin of the universe. That's a really big question, and religion is about answering the really big questions—not science. Science is narrow and reductionist, and makes stuff, but can't really grapple with the big questions of our origins. And that's exactly incorrect, as you were saying. That's a complete knock to science. I mean, science is, in fact, the only human intellectual endeavor that ''can'' answer any empirical question about the origin of the universe.

R: Yeah.

J: So, was the conference, though, the scientists trying to appease religious people? The saying that –

R: Well, you know, apparently, this was – the conference was done on the part of CERN, according to BBC, and that's what I find troubling. I'm totally OK with a conference that religious people host, you know, and the topic might be "How do we –" you know, "How do we consider our theology now that we know ''X'', ''Y'', and ''Z''—now that science has discovered this? What does that mean for ''our'' belief system?" And I think that's fine, but, you know, apparently, the theologians who were there seem to think that this was a chance to ''debate'' the scientists –

J: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

R: – and, no! Why would you do that? Debate is completely the opposite direction of where you want to go.

S: It also – I mean, the quotes seem to me like a desperate grasp at relevance, trying to make it seem like they're – you know, that theology is still relevant to questions about origins of the universe, when, in fact, science has completely displaced it from that endeavor.

J: So, did it end up with, like, a fistfight? Like, what happened?

(''laughter'')

E: Science won.

R: I haven't found any evidence of any arrests, so, apparently –

S: There were no fisticuffs?

J: That really must've been awkward as hell, though, right? Like, they're like, sitting there, like, after a whole day, and they're like, "Uh, OK, it's over now."

E: Something tells me they're not going to be doing this again. They're going to learn from this.

S: I don't know.

R: Well, I mean, it's actually not even – like, I wish it had been that exciting. But, instead, it just seems like it was really ''boring'' –

E: Yeah.

R: – and nobody came to ''any'' conclusions. Because you ''can't'', you know?

S: Yeah.

R: You're just having a discussion of, like, well, you know, "But what don't we know?"

=== Italian Earthquake Scientists Convicted (14:57)===
* [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/22/us-italy-earthquake-court-idUSBRE89L13V20121022 Italian scientists convicted over earthquake warning]

S: Now, we're trying to keep – we like to keep our live shows really light –

(''laughter'')

E: So far, so good.

S: So, we thought we'd talk about a horrible earthquake that killed over three hundred people.

E: Yeah, let's go there.

R: Good intro. Good intro there.

S: But there's actually a better story embedded in that. There were six Italian scientists, who were recently convicted of manslaughter –

B: Yeah.

S: – for failure to properly communicate the warnings about the upcoming L'Aquila earthquake in 2009. Yeah, we've been following this story, you know, since it happened. The quick version is that there were a number of small tremors in this very earthquake-prone part of Italy, and the geologists—the local geologists—you know, were following it. And their opinion was that, well, these tremors are very common. Most such tremors are not followed by major quakes. Most major quakes are not preceded by these kinds of tremors. So, the probability of a major quake occurring is not particularly higher, you know, now, just because of these tremors, than at any time, and, therefore, there's no cause for alarm. Now, they were specifically asked during a press conference, "Should we panic?" You know, "Should we evacuate?" And they said "No. There's no reason to evacuate. Stay at home and drink a glass of wine."

B: Steve, was this about a year ago that we covered this?

S: 2009. 2009 –

B: Oh, wow. (''inaudible'')

S: – so, was the quake, and then the court trial started about a year ago, and now the decision came down that the six scientists were convicted to six years – I think six years in prison and something like, you know, millions of dollars in damages for manslaughter—for the deaths of the people who didn't evacuate because they – of their reassurances that there was nothing to be worried about.

R: That's horrific.

J: Well, i, you know, to play devil's advocate real quick, if there was true negligence—like, if they didn't follow through with things that they needed to do, if they did a terrible job at analyzing the data, in a fashion that – where the data could have been analyzed better, or they actually weren't asking their peers for the information—i can understand if there was extreme negligence.

S: Right.

J: But, even still, like, that's very hard to prove, and I just don't understand –

S: Well, I mean, not really. The question is, was their opinion within the standard for their profession? That's—in my opinion—that's the only real question here. You can't be blamed for being wrong, right? You can't be blamed for a bad outcome if you were following the standard. Now, of course, scientists can't predict earthquakes. You can't predict when an earthquake is going to occur. That's the bottom line. What – every statement they said was truthful, you know, every factual statement. "These tremors do not necessarily mean that there's an earthquake coming, and they are not a reason to evacuate. We don't evacuate every city where there's tremors because there might be a major quake, because it's not that predictive." So, that was not negligent. No, and they weren't really being accused of negligence. They were basically being accused of poorly communicating to the public. It seems to be based on a lot of false premises about what scientists ''can know''—what an expert about, you know, an earthquake, a geologist, expert ''can know''.

R: Yeah, they've been convicted for not using a magical power they don't have.

S: Yeah.

R: They might as well have convicted all the psychics in Italy for not accurately predicting this earthquake.

J: I think we need to be careful—i don't disagree, of course. I don't think that these men should be going to jail for this at all—but it is an important thing to state that, I think, people should go to prison, or get in trouble ''legally'', if they are misrepresenting science or – right? So you see where I'm going with this.

S: Well, yeah. If you are –

J: If you're setting that premise—you're saying, "Hey, these guys screwed up, they didn't do what they were supposed to do, they didn't communicate to us the real possible outcomes here", whatever—and, like –

S: Yeah.

J: – I'll reiterate, I don't think that they should be going to jail—

B: Well, I don't agree –

J: —but, I do think, though, that that standard that that court set needs to be applied all the way down the ladder.

B: Yeah, but, Jay, like, someone saying that "I have a cure for cancer and it's scientifically proven" but it's a sham?

J: Exactly, right? So, if they're going to actually take those scientists out and say "You're done. You're not performing science anymore and you're going to jail for that bad decision or information you gave", well, hello! Then, you know, all of a sudden, a million lawsuits need to be filed.

S: But, it wasn't – to clarify, though, it wasn't ''bad'', it was just ''unlucky''. I mean, doctors encounter this all the time, you know. You are asked to decide, you know, what tests to order, what diagnoses a patient might have. There's a whole lot of liability involved with that. You can't be convicted of malpractice just because of a bad outcome if what you did was within the standard of care.

B: Right.

S: So, was the information they were giving to the public within the standard for the profession? If the answer is "yes", the fact that there was a low-probability earthquake the next week is not their fault.

E: Right.

S: It doesn't change the fact – you know, if they're saying there's a 99% chance that there's not going to be an earthquake, and then the 1% thing happens, they were still right –

J: Yeah.

S: – in saying that it was unlikely.

R: Yeah.

E: Didn't the evidence show, basically, that they performed correctly, essentially? They did not –

S: That's the consensus. I mean, so, there's worldwide outrage, especially among the scientific community (''inaudible'') –

B: This has got to be shot down in a higher court.

S: Yeah.

B: This can't – can't possibly stand.

E: I hope so.

S: Well, there's two appeals left. There's two appeals, and they will stay out of prison before those appeals. So, the United States National Academy of Science, the Royal Academy of Science—the Royal Society, rather—issued a joint statement saying that "that is why we must protest the verdict in Italy. If it becomes a precedent in law, it could lead to a situation in which scientists will be afraid to give expert opinion."

J: Yeah, that's devastating.

E: Mm-hmm.

S: So, it would have a chilling effect. What – you know, what geologist is going to, you know, talk to the public in Italy now, if you could wind up in jail and, you know, financially devastated, and your career devastated, because you can't predict the future, you know, because you don't have a crystal ball? It's insane. It's insane.

J: Yeah. To think that they're going after these scientists, and they're not going after the rampant quackery throughout –

S: Well, there's that, too.

E: I wonder how much pressure they came under from, like, the families, the survivors, of this terrible, terrible devastation –

J: Oh yeah, they had to hang someone.

E: – and I imagine they put a lot of pressure on politicians and other people in order to hold ''somebody'' accountable.

J: They have to. They had to send someone down the river for that.

B: Did they have a trial?

S: Yeah.

B: Did they have witnesses and experts coming in?

S: Yeah. Yep.

B: I'd love to know the details of what exactly happened, because how could –

(''laughter'')

S: So, we'll see if the worldwide backlash has an effect. I mean, again, they do have two appeals left, so we'll definitely follow it.

=== Whale Makes Human Sounds (21:35)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20026938 Beluga whale 'makes human-like sounds']

S: All right, Rebecca, so, we have a cute animal –

R: Thank you.

S: – we're going to talk about now.

J: This is a happy one!

R: Just tell me this narwhal or whatever is alive.

S: It's a whale.

E: It's alive and well.

S: It's a beluga whale.

B: It sort of looks like a narwhal.

R: Tell me this beluga is alive!

E: That's NOC the beluga. They're very much alive.

R: It's not a beluga?

E: "NOC". N-O-C.

S: "NOC". NOC the beluga.

R: Oh! "That's NOC."

(''laughter'')

R: I was about to say, "No, ''that is a beluga''."

S: Sounds like a children's song.

E: It does sound like a children's –

S: Evan, sing it.

E: No.

S: OK.

J: Don't change it! Please don't –

E: If my daughter was here, maybe. But, no. So, what's important about NOC the beluga? Well, OK, so, picture this: You are part of the National Marine Mammal Foundation, OK, and you're in the tank, swimming around with the whales and stuff, and, all of a sudden, you hear somebody—you hear a voice—call your name. Something to the effect that – "Get out of the water! Get out of the water!" So, you're in the tank and you come up and you say, "OK, who told me to get out of the water? Who told me to get out of the water?" And the other scientists and people are looking around you like, "Nobody? What the heck are you talking about?" And, he's like, "Well, I definitely ''heard'' that!" Well, what did he actually hear? Well, apparently, NOC the beluga made some noises very reminiscent of human noises. Beluga whales are, you know, incredible creatures. Their calls – They're known as the canaries of the sea. They have a very high-frequency, high-pitched tone to their noises that they make, but they make lots of different kinds of noises. They can emit up to eleven different kinds of sounds—crackles, whistles, trills, squawks—all sorts of things. But, it's been rumored that these whales can emit noises that sound like humans talking. And, for the first time, they've actually recorded NOC the whale making these noises, and they have it on tape. And we have it on tape.

R: Nah.

(''NOC makes unnervingly human-sounding noises'')

R: Did he maybe just swallow a kazoo?

(''laughter'')

J: Everybody has a drunk neighbor that makes those noises.

(''laughter'')

E: Oh, gosh. Who knows what the heck he was saying? You know, dolphins have been taught to mimic noises that kind of sound like human voices, but, before this, there's been no record of an animal ''spontaneously'' coming up and making these kinds of noises. This is the first evidence, the first hard evidence we have of it.

R: Here's – I have a theory. I have a theory. I have a theory that – so, whales, in general, are incredibly intelligent –

E: Oh yeah.

R: – possibly as smart as us, but they don't want thumbs, or any way to talk to us –

E: Or fire.

R: – and I feel like they do, basically – That's true. No, I saw Spongebob once. There was fire under the sea. I think it can be done.

S: Yep, but they don't have nanotechnology, though.

R: They don't. So, my theory is that whales are basically, like – they have – it's like they have locked-in syndrome, you know? Where they're just –

J: Oh, no.

R: – super-intelligent, and there's all these people around them, and they're just messing with them –

J: So, he was screaming, actually –

R: Yeah! And, so, he's been like, his whole life, he's been in this stupid little – like, he's in captivity, right? So, he's been in this stupid little aquarium, and he's just, like, "I hate all of you! And I'm going to will myself to tell you, because you're too stupid to understand!"

E: So, basically, what's going on here is, the whale has learned to change – rapidly change pressure within its naval cavity in order to create these sounds. And, it hasn't – the whale is able to over-inflate what's known as its vestibular sac in its blowhole, which is normally acts to stop water from basically coming in. So, the whale is going through a lot of, you know, effort, essentially, to try to make these noises. And I'm sure they're going to be trying to figure out exactly, you know, basically, ''why'' is the whale doing this?

S: Well, he just – this whale was – did spend his life in captivity –

E: Yeah.

S: – so, he did hear human speech a lot, and maybe he's just, to some extent, mimicking the sounds that he grew up hearing his whole life.

J: It's definitely – it definitely has a human sound to it, in the cadence and everything.

S: Yeah.

J: I mean, he's intelligent enough to mimic a human, which is really cool.

R: Yeah.

J: And, then, you always think, you know, if he can mimic a human—if his brain is advanced that much—you know, maybe he –

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But, is he mimicking humans or making fun of humans? You know, like people make fun of other languages?

R: Yeah, he's just like "Weh! Weh! Weh! This is what you sound like!"

E: Yeah. You stupid bald monkey and (''inaudible'')! Get out of here!

B: Sounds like a false dichotomy.

=== PANDAS Controversy (26:18)===
* [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/a-pandas-story/ A PANDAS Story]

S: So, we're going to talk about – going from talking about beluga whales to talking about PANDAS! Except, we're not talking about pandas, because we're talking about –

E: Wait.

R: Stop toying with my emotions, Steve!

S: I had to put a cute picture of a panda up there for you, Rebecca. We are talking about pediatric autoimmune –

R: It makes sense.

S: – neuropsychiatric disorder associated with –

E: I didn't know PANDA was an acronym. Cool!

R: Steve, I miss the panda.

S: – streptococcal infection—or, PANDAS. See? There's a panda.

(''laughter, cooing'')

E: Aww!

R: Yay.

S: We're talking about PANDAS –

E: Aww.

R: Boo.

J: Oh.

E: That's worse.

S: – which is a legitimately controversial medical diagnosis! So, essentially, what happens is, children suddenly develop ticks—like Tourette syndrome—and psychiatric disorders—obsessive–compulsive disorder—and it is thought that, in some cases, that it is actually – the inciting event is an infection—bacteria—streptococcal infection. Now, of course, it's always difficult to establish the reality of a new disease. Unless you get all your ducks in a row, and all the, you know, pathology all adds up, it's sometimes difficult to identify a legitimate new syndrome and to prove that – cause and effect. So, correlation is one thing. As we know, correlation is not ''necessarily'' causation. And, so, the syndrome exists. There are – the number of physicians who have identified the sudden onset psychiatric – neuropsychiatric disorder, and in some cases it is temporally associated with a streptococcal infection. But that's not the same thing as saying that the strep infection ''caused'' the neuropsychiatric syndrome. So, that's – and there's the controversy. Now, of course, we live in the modern Internet age. So, as soon as a scientist says, "I think that there's this syndrome—I want to call it PANDAS—and – sort of, you know, a psychiatric syndrome provoked by a bacterial infection", of course, there are now support groups, and there's groups on the Internet, and there's patient groups supporting this diagnosis before the science is even settled. And, then, of course, once that happens, when you try to do more science, or have any kind of discussion about whether or not this is a real syndrome, you have parents and patient groups and advocacy groups, you know, calling you all kinds of nasty names and saying there's a conspiracy against people with PANDAS, it's all the insurance companies and Big Pharma and evil doctors or whatever. So, that's the situation that we're in the middle of right now, unfortunately, is that, before the science is settled, you know, there's the scientific controversy, then there's the public controversy. This came to the media attention recently because of a 16-year-old girl called Elizabeth Wray. She developed, you know, a syndrome like PANDAS with ticks and psychological disorders, was diagnosed by a physician with PANDAS, and then was transferred to Boston's Children's Hospital for – presumably for further treatment of PANDAS. Now, the story that is going around the PANDAS community is that once she got to Boston University—or Boston Children's Hospital—she was told – the parents were told, "We don't believe that PANDAS is real – that it exists", and then they essentially admitted their daughter to the psychiatric unit and started treating her with psychiatric medications. Now, I don't know if that's true, because the doctors and the hospital are not telling their side of the story because of patient confidentiality. So, we don't know what their side of the story is. We only know the parents' side of the story, filtered through the PANDAS community. Unfortunately, now there's – this story has taken on a life of its own. There's a Free Elizabeth Wray movement going on within the PANDAS community, they're telling all kinds of horror stories about Boston Children's Hospital, and, you know, we can't verify any of it. What's interesting in reading about it is that each side has their narrative—and I wrote about this on Science-Based Medicine—because one of the things that – the ideas that we're wrestling with in the skeptical community is that—well, all right, we have, I think, a good approach to critical thinking, we understand a lot about self-deception, about the nature of science and pseudoscience—but we don't always have a good story to tell the public, or we have a hard time convincing mainstream outlets that we have – that our story is an interesting and good one. You know, we have to really market our narrative—the skeptical narrative. When you read about stories like this, the PANDAS proponents have a really compelling emotional narrative. It may be total B.S.—i don't know—but it's very compelling. They have a story of a child suffering from an unusual disease, parents who just want to do what's right for her—I believe all those things are correct—and then they are, essentially, being abused by a dismissive and skeptical medical establishment who doesn't believe in this disease, and that is treating their child with perhaps harmful, you know, psychiatric medications. They even – this went to court. Apparently, the hospital thought that the parents were being negligent in not allowing them to give proper standard of care—psychiatric treatment—to their child, and they wanted to have custody taken away from the parents, and they wanted to admit Elizabeth to a locked psychiatric ward—again, not sure – I can't verify those from the hospital's side of things. A judge – a Massachusetts judge essentially made her a ward of the state while they sorted out what was going on, but they did not grant the hospital their request to treat her in the way that they wanted to. So, they essentially just – the state took her out of everybody's hands for a moment – for the moment. So, it's interesting. Of course, the PANDAS community, again, is up in arms, you know. The court essentially took custody away from these parents that are only trying to do what's right for their daughter. But, of course, you could see the other narrative—you know, let's assume that the physicians think that—even if you think – whether or not you think PANDAS really exists—they think that she has a psychiatric illness, the parents are in denial, they're pursuing this false diagnosis, and they're, you know, refusing standard medical care. That's a story, too.

B: What if you just pulled out the whole strep association, and just treat it like a "pandisorder"? Is their beef that it's associated with strep, and they don't think there's any association? Why don't they just treat it like a neuropsychiatric disorder –

S: Yeah.

B: – and forget about the whole strep association?

S: Well, because the strep association would lead you to treat with things like antibiotics. So, that's the question: Should you treat it with antibiotics, or should you treat her like a psychiatric (''inaudible'') patient?

J: Why not both? I mean, why wouldn't you –

S: Well, she has had at least one round of antibiotics. You can also treat it like an autoimmune disease, with, like, intravenous globulin, for example. So, I mean, these are real medical questions. Do we treat it like an infection, do we treat it like a post-infectious auto-immune disease, or do we treat it like a psychiatric disorder? Those are real questions.

J: Steve, are you saying pandas don't exist? Let me just get this straight.

(''laughter'')

S: So, well, I did – to give a serious answer to your sarcastic question, I did –

R: My favorite kind.

S: – take the opportunity – I'm good that way. I'm good that way. I did take the opportunity just to familiarize myself with the PANDAS literature—again, I always emphasize, I'm no an expert in this, but I can read the literature and give my opinion like a science journalist—i think it's genuinely controversial. When I read the research, there's lots of – the ducks are not in a row. So, when you do things like treat kids who apparently have PANDAS with antibiotics in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, they don't necessarily improve. And, if you look for the antibodies that are supposed to be there, they don't necessarily correlate with the disease onset or with the existence of strep. So –

B: So, this is clearly not like autism and vaccines. It's just more complicated than that.

S: So, no. So, right. So, autism and vaccines, like, I would say, that's been studied enough to say that autism's – that autism is not caused by vaccines. We can say that. We can make the negative statement. I cannot make the negative statement that PANDAS does not exist, only that the research so far has not reached the threshold where we can agree that it does exist and that there is some actual negative data—there's some positive data, too—so it's legitimately controversial. It did remind me, though, of the chronic Lyme disease controversy—

R: Yeah.

S: —which is very common in New England—again, where they think that a number of symptoms, including neurological symptoms, can be caused by a bacterial infection and treated with antibiotics. And the same – there's a lot of overlap in those two communities, you know.

J: Steve, are you saying that the public has unrealistic expectations?

S: Well, I think – it's partly that. I mean, I think the public is uncomfortable with the uncertainty, and they like this sort of hero–villain narrative, so they paint the medical community as the villains, and—except for those maverick physicians who understand. They're Lyme-literate, or they understand PANDAS, so they're the heroes—and, then, the insurance companies don't want to pay for, you know, over-and-over recurrent courses of IV antibiotics, so they're the villains, you know. They're not—I'm not defending insurance companies, but sometimes they actually – sometimes they're right. They don't want to pay for things that are not science-based or evidence-based. So, it's complicated. And, you know, how do we – so, how do we deal with a child with this disorder when we don't know what the best scientific answer is—we don't know if it's autoimmune, infectious, or psychiatric? We just have to, you know, do the best we can—and there may be different physicians who would take different approaches—but to portray it as "PANDAS definitely exists. If you don't believe in it, you're dismissive and you're mean and evil, or you're protecting some kind of Big Pharma grant that you're getting"—they always bring that up—rather than saying, "You know, we really want to know the right answer, but we just haven't found it yet. It's still – it's legitimately controversial."

J: Yeah, I think what you're saying does confirm what I was thinking, is that the public wants an answer, science is not yet done figuring this one out, and –

S: Yeah. Like the earthquake one, right?

J: Yeah.

S: Sometimes the answer is, "We don't know yet", you know. "We need to do more research". In medicine, we have to make decisions with imperfect, you know, information, so, you know.

J: Wouldn't it be typical, too – like, let's say that this is happening over and over again –

S: Yeah.

J: – like, at some point, some doctors are going to come up with different ideas, they're going to try it out, you know. The trial-and-error process happens, and—i hate to say it, but—this girl is probably going to be one of the people that gets tested on with new ideas.

S: Well, I mean – well, if you're really testing then you should be doing a research protocol. If you're just applying the best knowledge that we have to an individual patient, that's – a certain amount of trial and error with that that's not really experimentation. So, there is a difference there. So, I don't know. The other interesting question that I'm kind of alluding to is, what role do the patient or the advocacy groups play? I think, a lot of times, that they are helpful in raising awareness for a disease or a disorder and raising funding, and advocating for patients. You know, I've seen, I think, there's a lot of very effective, very good patient advocacy groups out there. But, sometimes, they put their nickel down on a specific scientific answer, and that's not their job.

J: Yeah.

S: It's not their job to predict or demand that science give them the answer they want. And, you know, unfortunately, some people want the answer to be "an infection"—not "genes", not, you know, "We don't know".

J: Yeah. It's curable. That's the one they want.

S: Of course, who – that's the answer I would want to have! "It's something outside that is, you know, foreign, that can be cured, and that can reverse my child to the way that they were". Who – every parent wants that to be the answer, but sometimes you – you know, you have to step back from what you want and listen to the evidence. That's the – that's the scientist's, that's the physician's job, you know. You should just let them do their job, you know.

J: All right, so, I want to bring up a quick side point on this.

S: Yeah.

J: So, as an example, let's say, fifty years ago, let's say this was happening. What stance do you think the public would have differently than what we're seeing today?

S: It's the same, and this ''did'' happen fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, you know, she would be diagnosed with neurosyphilis—maybe not somebody who was sixteen, but that was the stand-in for what we now would, you know, the same subculture would diagnose with chronic Lyme. There were believers in that. There were physicians who believed in treatments like chelation therapy, you know, and science proved it wrong, and they said, "Well, we don't care, we're going to still do it. We're going to come up with – We're just going to keep coming up with special pleading and alternate theories, and form our own societies and our own – and just keep doing it, and say that it's all a conspiracy."

J: Mm-hmm.

S: So, but, I think that it's just the turnaround time is so much faster because of the Internet. Like, another example: CCSVI, right? The alleged blockage in the veins that drained blood from the brain, causing multiple sclerosis. It's that – that whole process—of Dr. Zamboni proposing this entity and a treatment, to it being researched, to it being refuted, to, you know, patient advocacy groups springing up and calling for conspiracies and calling for research and demanding that science give them the answer that they want—all has taken place within a few years. We've seen that cycle happen right before our eyes. So, the Internet is just making it happen a lot quicker and a lot bigger, I think. But it's always been this way.

J: So do you have any ideas on what we could do? Could the skeptical community do anything to help this (''inaudible'')?

S: Well, I think what we do is, we discuss the issue from a science, logical, critical thinking point of view, you know. We point out the role of science in this, and we, I think, we try to bring the public discourse to a level that can deal with it in a more productive way, rather than the conspiracy mongering, sort of lowest-common-denominator that it would otherwise sink to.

J: Yeah.

=== Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44)===
* pnd

{{transcribing
|transcriber = Cornelioid
}}

S: Well, let's move on. Jay, we're talking about how the media presents stories about paranormal activities.

J: Yeah, this is interesting. So, a professor decided to – Professor Brewer decided that—because what we're seeing over the years is a very obvious interest, in the general public, to news articles, and to TV shows, that talk about ghosts; and, you know, we've all seen the ''Ghost Hunter'' TV show, and, to people like us, at best, we watch it, and it's fun, right? 'Cause it's ridiculous and entertaining, and we like to see people from our perspective—a skeptical perspective—they're acting foolishly. But, there are a lot of people that are watching this, and they're riveted. Like, they really love it and they think a lot of it's real—and, i'm sure, to a certain degree, i can't say everyone that watches it and thinks everything about it is real—but, in the end, there's a huge entertainment factor there, and, unfortunately, to us skeptics, we feel like there's a lot of people that simply believe it, and that's their favorite entertainment. And i know a lot of people—I'm friends with a lot of people—that literally have active discussions on Facebook all the time, that i dip into, that are talking about the latest TAPS show. We'll be, "Can you believe it?" and "I knew that place was haunted!", and they're like, you know, getting whooped up.

S: I don't get it. I just don't get it. Nothing happens!

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

R: That's not true! That's not true.

E:

S: But they never find a ghost.

R: Steve, Steve. Did you feel that?

(''laughter'')

R: That happens! That happens all the time.

(''applause'')

R: They feel so much.

J: The thing is, you know –

S: I want to see a full, floating torso drift across the camera lens. Then i'll be impressed.

B: I still won't believe it.

S: No, but at least it'll be entertaining.

J: A lot of the shows, though, they're all right on the cusp, you know? They're always ''just'' seeing something, or something ''just'' falls over, you know? Or there's a noise from upstairs, or whatever, and it's never – they never give you that.

R: This, actually – this came up—tomorrow i'll be talking about the [http://paranormalroadtrip.org/ paranormal road trip] i just went on with Jon Ronson and Richard Wiseman that got us here—and, at one of the stops, we were at a – we did talk to someone in a "haunted museum", and she was telling us that "the ghost hunters were there, and it was very exciting because there was a noise in the attic, and there were steps (''step sounds'') even though nobody was up there, and so the ghost hunter ran over and climbed up the ladder and looked into the attic, and, just then, a lady, dressed all in white, came ''flying at him'', and he shrieked in horror and fell down the ladder, and it was all really dramatic", and we were just completely blown away, obviously. We were riveted. And we said, "We cannot ''wait'' to see that footage!" "Actually, i mean, it was so good, they didn't get that on camera. No, all the cameras were down in another room somewhere."

R: "There's literally no evidence "

S: Ed Warren. We were investigating Ed Warren, and he told us this story of being in a haunted house, and they had a local news crew over there, and, for like two hours, they videotaped things flying around the room, you know, really impressive, you know, smoking-gun evidence of paranormal activity. We're like, "Great! Can we see that footage?"

J: "Yeah!"

S: "You know what? They taped over it for the news segment later that night."

(''laughter'')

S: Go – go figure. Stupid news crew.

J: So, i – i'm going to ask a couple of questions that i want you guys to not answer right now, but just think about it, 'cause these are pretty obvious questions, but i think they're interesting. "Why do people believe, or like to believe, in the paranormal? What's the attraction?" It's an interesting question if you think about it. There are people who ''really'' seek it out and love it. And there's something exciting about it, something kind of visceral about it. To my mind—to a skeptical mind—i don't have a connection to it. I just don't see what that allure is, other than, maybe—because i do like horror movies, and i do like to get scared. I love being actually scared in a movie theater. It doesn't happen that often, but when it does happen it's very thrilling—and, maybe they're just having a lot of those thrilling moments. It's easier for them to get scared.

R: But, also, i mean, don't you think, maybe, it's got something to do with the fact that, maybe, we're not going to rot in the ground and die and never see our loved ones again? maybe?

J: I'm not going to say no, but when i think about it, there's something thrilling about it. I'm not thinking, as i'm being thrilled in a horror movie, "Oh, i'm defying death by being thrilled right now!" It's not happening. I'm just – there is something – it's like eating something really spicy that hurts.

B:

J: It hurts, but it's good at the same time, right?

E: Uh.

S: To a lot of people, definitely, evidence of ghosts is evidence of the afterlife. That's the appeal.

R: Yeah, and when we talk to people who describe their own experiences often—they're talking about Grandma and Grandpa and whatnot coming back to them and telling them that it's all OK—you know, and they're very comforting messages –

J: Yeah, which is why

E: Which is why they watch these shows. It reinforces these positions that these people have, you know, and they derive a certain, you know, need –

J: I wonder, though, because those shows are so bad! They're so bad.

R: No, no, no! Personally, i would derive a lot of happiness from knowing that my dearly beloved grandmother, who i adored when i was young—she died when i was young—i would get so much happiness knowing that she was just screwing around with asshole ghosthunters on TV. Just, like, brushing past them and disappearing whenever the cameras come out. That would give me a lot of satisfaction, knowing that.

J: Maybe the skeptical version of it is watching a YouTube video of Hitchens just tearing some moron apart, right? That's our version of that?

E: That releases

J: That makes me believe in something, right?

E: Yeah.

J: It gives me a thrill, but – OK, anyways. So, there is an article we're talking about here. So, Dr. Paul Brewer, who is – teaches at the University of Deleware, developed a study that was recently published in the journal ''Science: Communication'' that examines the influence of the media on the public's perception of the paranormal. So, here's his test: He took four news articles that were similar to each other, but they had significant differences in some of the details. The essence of it was, he had an article on one end of the spectrum that described a paranormal effect with a paranormal investigator, and they were using instruments to measure things, or whatever. And, then, as you go down to the fourth article, the fourth article gets very descriptive about using, you know, faux scientific language to make the paranormal investigators sound scientifically-minded, and using scientific tools.

== Live Q&A (51:06) ==
* Questions from the CSICon audience

== Science or Fiction (55:19) ==

S: Item number one. A new study finds that astronauts who spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. Item number two. Scientists have discovered the first feathered dinosaur in the western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers. And item number three. Researchers find that, at the molecular level, evolutionary changes can be highly predictable.

== Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:08:11) ==
<blockquote>Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.</blockquote>
J: Paul Kurtz!

{{Outro1}}

== References ==
<references/>

{{Navigation}}

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-08T17:33:51Z

Cornelioid: /* Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44) */ continued segment

{{LatestEpisode}}
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{{InfoBox
|episodeTitle = SGU Episode 381
|episodeDate = 3rd November 2012 
|episodeIcon = File:KurtzPic2.jpg 
|previous = 
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|rebecca = y 
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|jay = y 
|evan = y 
|guest1 = RW: Richard Wiseman
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|downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2012-11-03.mp3
|notesLink = http://www.theskepticsguide.org/archive/podcastinfo.aspx?mid=1&pid=381
|forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,43845.0.html
|qowText = Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality. 
|qowAuthor = [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] 
|}}

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

RW: – a live edition of my favorite podcast and radio show. So, we're going to have Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Jay Novella, Even Bernstein, and – and a woman –

(''laughter'')

RW: – join us. It's the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe!

(''applause'')

S: Hello, and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

(''applause'')

S: Today is Thursday, October 25th, 2012, and we are live from [http://www.csiconference.org/ CSICon 2012].

(''applause'')

Joining me, as always, are Bob Novella –

B: Hey everybody!

(''cheers'')

S: – Rebecca Watson –

R: Hello, everyone!

(''cheers'')

''audience member'': I love you, Rebecca!

R: I love you, too!

S: – Jay Novella...Jay Novella –

J: Wooooo! Rebecca, yeah!

(''cheers'')

R: I love you, Jay!

S: – and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hello, Nashville!

(''cheers'')

S: So, how're you guys doing? How do you like Nashville?

J: It's awesome. I didn't – I thought people were going to literally be playing guitar when I got off the airplane.

B: Oh, come on, Jay.

S: Yeah, in the airport, you know?

J: Yeah.

== This Day in Skepticism (1:28) ==
November 3, 1957 Sputnik 2 launched

S: So, Rebecca, you always start us off with a This Day in Science and Skepticism. This show will be going up on November 3rd, so, did anything happen that day?

R: Nope.

(''laughter'')

B: Ever?

R: Oh, all right. One thing happened. One thing happened! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_2 Sputnik 2] happened.

S: ''Sputnik 2: The Revenge''.

(''laughter'')

R: ''Son of Sputnik''.

S: ''Son of Sputnik''.

J: ''Son of Sputnik''!

R: That's right. Sputnik 2 you might know as "the one that killed the puppy".

(''awwws'')

R: No? Aww, that's weird, 'cause I really thought that this would go over well at a live event! Yeah, Sputnik 2 is the craft that took Laika into orbit, Laika being the Soviet space dog who became the first animal in orbit—for about, like, 10 minutes, before she died.

E: Well, you know –

S: A couple of hours. It was a couple of hours. They thought he was going to survive for about ten days –

R: I think she's a "she".

S: – ''she'' was going to survive –

E: Eh.

R: Get it right, Steve!

S: You know, asexual Russian names, I mean, come on. But, they thought that Laika was going to survive for about ten days, but then they had a little mishap with the cooling system, and –

E: Oops.

S: Yeah. – got a little hot in the capsule—104 degrees, they said in (''inaudible'')

E: That'd be a hot dog. Yep.

(''groans'')

B: Oh, come on. My god.

E: Thank you. I'll be here all the weekend.

R: How – can we just take a moment, just to take a poll of the audience: How are our dead dog jokes doing? Good?

J: Yes!

(''applause'')

R: OK. All right. Yeah.

J: You know what? I didn't know until we researched this item that it was a one-way mission.

R: Yeah.

E: Mm-hmm.

J: That's really nasty.

S: Well, the capsule returned.

(''laughter'')

E: Yeah, well –

S: About 162 days later, it burned up in the atmosphere. But, yeah, they never intended to bring Laika back.

J: No, they actually were going to euthanize her with poison food after the tenth day, I think, right?

R: This is seriously the worst item ever. What was I thinking when I picked it?

S: There – there's Laika.

E: Aww. Aww.

R: Oh yeah! I didn't pick it! Steve forced me to!

E: But, we'd never know who this dog was if it didn't go on Sputnik 2, right? I mean, this would be an otherwise – another animal.

R: No, yeah, and I'm sure Laika appreciates the fame she gets from ''beyond the grave''.

E: She got her fifteen minutes.

== In Memorium ==
=== Paul Kurtz (3:45) ===
* 1925-2012

S: Well, we are going to start the new segment of the show with an ''in memoriam''. We do like to, on the ''Skeptic's Guide'', pause to remember those members of the skeptical community who have passed, and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] died several days ago, just the day before the organizers were coming down to the conference. He died on Sunday. He was 85 years old. It was 1925 to 2012, so that is 86. I can do math. (''audience laughter'') You'll know why i was confused in a moment.

R: 'Cause you're terrible at math?

S: Yes. So, before we get the show started, Ron Lindsay and Kendrick Frazier talked about Paul Kurtz. You know, he was one of the giants of the skeptical movement, of the skeptical community. You know, he was largely responsible for organizing the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, founding Prometheus Books, CFI, [http://www.secularhumanism.org/ Secular Humanism]. He was an academic, a philosopher. He really gave a lot of weight to the movement early on. He made it to that – he broke it to that next level. It wasn't that, you know, before he came on board. So he has to be remembered for that. We did have some interactions with Paul along the years. The first year that we started – (''audience cooing'')

R: Baby Steve!

E: Aww.

S: I was a little younger back then.

R: He's three years old there.

B: He's only half-grey there.

S: (''laughing'') I'm only half-grey!

E: A little less grey, yep.

S: You can mark my age by my greyness up until about ten years ago, when i went totally grey. Right when we got started, in 1996, you know, CSICOP, now CSI, you know, they were the big national skeptical organization. They'd definitely – They took us under their wing, you know, gave us their support, their local membership list, so that we could get our movement going. And i remember meeting Paul at the first World Skeptics Conference, and he was immediately—like, you know, your grandfather—like, you know, very, very comfortably took on that air of being a mentor. It's like, "Yeah, this is great. You're welcome to the skeptical movement." So i definitely remember him fondly in that way. A few years later, Paul organized a meeting of the local skeptical groups. In the picture here you can see me again with Bob, Perry, and Evan. The four of us came up together –

J: Now, if i remember correctly, Rebecca, you and i were off being badass somewhere else, right?

R: I think that's what was happening, yeah.

S: – and, i think, in the foreground, that's Colonel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Nickell Joe Nickell], isn't it?

E: Colonel.

S: Yeah, he had broke his leg in Spain, or something?

R: Round of applause for Colonel Joe Nickell!

E: I remember that.

(''applause'')

S: Joe actually is going to come up, and he's going to read a poem that he wrote, i believe, about Paul.

JN: Paul was a great supporter of the arts, and i hope he would have liked this. The poem is called "Book of Seasons: An elegy". (''Uncertain re: permission to reproduce poem'')

S: Thank you, Joe.

=== Leon Jaroff (7:34) ===
* 1926-2012

S: This same weekend, Saturday before the show, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_(magazine) Leon Jaroff] also died. ''He'' was 85, hence my confusion. So, Leon Jariff—not a big name in the skeptical community recently, and if you ask, you know, people at conventions like this if they knew who he was – I mean, in fact, right before the show Rebecca said to me, "Who's Leon Jaroff?"

R: (''indignant gasp'')

S: Sorry, Rebecca.

(''audience laughter'')

S: But he was perhaps one of the most skeptical journalists that we have had.

B: Yeah.

S: He was the science columnist for ''Time Magazine''. It was he who said, "You know, popularizing science is important, you know, we should start a science-dedicated magazine." And that was ''Discover Magazine''. That was him. He was not afraid to be a hard-nosed skeptic when writing about scientific issues. So, for example, when writing about chiropractors, [http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,213482,00.html he wrote],

<blockquote>
Chiropractors also employ a bewildering variety of weird practices to diagnose their patients. Some use applied kinesiology, a muscle test that supposedly can diagnose allergies and diseased organs. Hair analysis and iris readings are commonplace in the profession. Even sillier are many of the treatments that chiropractors use and recommend: homeopathic potions, colon irrigation, magnetic therapy, enzyme pills, colored-light therapy, and something called "balancing body energy," among other mystical procedures with undocumented effects.
</blockquote>

S: That's from a mainstream journalist writing in ''Time Magazine''. Do we see this kind of thing today? I don't think so.

B: Nope.

(''audience applause'')

S: So, you know, we do have to, I think, also note the support that Jaroff gave to such a good science journalism, and that kind of hard-nosed, skeptical science journalism is definitely something we miss. That's a void that, I think, that we in the skeptical community have to fill, but, unfortunately, it is a void.

== News Items ==
=== Big Bang Conference at CERN (9:31)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19870036 Big Bang and religion mixed in Cern debate]

S: Rebecca –

R: Yes!

S: – this is a different quote. It's not as good a quote.

<blockquote>
Science in isolation is great for producing stuff, but not so good for producing ideas.
</blockquote>

R: Mm-hmm.

S: Who said that?

R: That was said by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Pinsent Andrew Pinsent] at the Ramsey Center for Science and Religion. What I particularly liked about this quote is that it is completely reversed – it is the exact opposite of what I would have suggested.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I would say that science is actually really good at ideas, but, in order to produce stuff, you have to add something else. You know, like, they might be able to figure out lasers, but to make a CD player you need a marketing executive.

S: Or death ray.

R: Thank you. Yeah, of course. Why didn't I go there first?

(''laughter'')

R: Yeah, so, this quote comes from a recent article that the BBC produced: "Big Bang and religion mixed in CERN debates". Apparently, there was a conference recently that CERN held—you remember CERN, you know, the guys who, apparently, may have found –

J: Higgs!

R: – the Higgs boson.

S: A boson with Higgs-like properties.

R: A Higgs-like thing.

S: Boson, yeah.

R: A Higgish. I like "Higgish" –

B: "Higgish"?

R: – a little bit.

J: (''laughing'') "A little bit!"

S: "Higgy"?

B: (''singing, inaudible'') ''Higgy again."

R: So, yes. Apparently, I don't know the purpose – I don't know what, who dreamt this up, but what I'm thinking is that someone was concerned that they may have found a particle that many people know as the "God particle", and, so, they're concerned that they're going to be excommunicated or, you know, that people will rebel—religious people will rebel—against science. Basically, we'll have some sort of Dark Ages–esque thing happening, and, so, maybe somebody at CERN thought, "Well, we should have this conference where we talk about how religious people should be OK with the Higgs boson."

B: Mm-hmm.

R: So, those are the good intentions that I'm assuming are behind this conference that has speakers such as this. The quotes in here are pretty fun, and none of them have any amount of intelligence to them. Steve, you're the one who brought this one to my attention here –

S: Yes.

R: I'm interested in what – we've talked a little bit before about things like the Templeton Foundation, which is an organization that gives out a prize – gives out prizes to people who can explore science in a religious context, basically. And I'm a bit opposed to it. I feel like it's muddying the waters. I think we don't ''need'' to bring religion into what people are doing at CERN.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I think those two things are happily separated, but I'm interested in knowing your feelings on this.

S: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think trying to introduce theology into science is misguided. You know, this conference was specifically about the origin of the universe. So, it's not just about scientific issues in particular. I think the thinking, at least on the part of the theologians who were quoted about this conference, is that, well, you're talking about the origin of the universe. That's a really big question, and religion is about answering the really big questions—not science. Science is narrow and reductionist, and makes stuff, but can't really grapple with the big questions of our origins. And that's exactly incorrect, as you were saying. That's a complete knock to science. I mean, science is, in fact, the only human intellectual endeavor that ''can'' answer any empirical question about the origin of the universe.

R: Yeah.

J: So, was the conference, though, the scientists trying to appease religious people? The saying that –

R: Well, you know, apparently, this was – the conference was done on the part of CERN, according to BBC, and that's what I find troubling. I'm totally OK with a conference that religious people host, you know, and the topic might be "How do we –" you know, "How do we consider our theology now that we know ''X'', ''Y'', and ''Z''—now that science has discovered this? What does that mean for ''our'' belief system?" And I think that's fine, but, you know, apparently, the theologians who were there seem to think that this was a chance to ''debate'' the scientists –

J: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

R: – and, no! Why would you do that? Debate is completely the opposite direction of where you want to go.

S: It also – I mean, the quotes seem to me like a desperate grasp at relevance, trying to make it seem like they're – you know, that theology is still relevant to questions about origins of the universe, when, in fact, science has completely displaced it from that endeavor.

J: So, did it end up with, like, a fistfight? Like, what happened?

(''laughter'')

E: Science won.

R: I haven't found any evidence of any arrests, so, apparently –

S: There were no fisticuffs?

J: That really must've been awkward as hell, though, right? Like, they're like, sitting there, like, after a whole day, and they're like, "Uh, OK, it's over now."

E: Something tells me they're not going to be doing this again. They're going to learn from this.

S: I don't know.

R: Well, I mean, it's actually not even – like, I wish it had been that exciting. But, instead, it just seems like it was really ''boring'' –

E: Yeah.

R: – and nobody came to ''any'' conclusions. Because you ''can't'', you know?

S: Yeah.

R: You're just having a discussion of, like, well, you know, "But what don't we know?"

=== Italian Earthquake Scientists Convicted (14:57)===
* [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/22/us-italy-earthquake-court-idUSBRE89L13V20121022 Italian scientists convicted over earthquake warning]

S: Now, we're trying to keep – we like to keep our live shows really light –

(''laughter'')

E: So far, so good.

S: So, we thought we'd talk about a horrible earthquake that killed over three hundred people.

E: Yeah, let's go there.

R: Good intro. Good intro there.

S: But there's actually a better story embedded in that. There were six Italian scientists, who were recently convicted of manslaughter –

B: Yeah.

S: – for failure to properly communicate the warnings about the upcoming L'Aquila earthquake in 2009. Yeah, we've been following this story, you know, since it happened. The quick version is that there were a number of small tremors in this very earthquake-prone part of Italy, and the geologists—the local geologists—you know, were following it. And their opinion was that, well, these tremors are very common. Most such tremors are not followed by major quakes. Most major quakes are not preceded by these kinds of tremors. So, the probability of a major quake occurring is not particularly higher, you know, now, just because of these tremors, than at any time, and, therefore, there's no cause for alarm. Now, they were specifically asked during a press conference, "Should we panic?" You know, "Should we evacuate?" And they said "No. There's no reason to evacuate. Stay at home and drink a glass of wine."

B: Steve, was this about a year ago that we covered this?

S: 2009. 2009 –

B: Oh, wow. (''inaudible'')

S: – so, was the quake, and then the court trial started about a year ago, and now the decision came down that the six scientists were convicted to six years – I think six years in prison and something like, you know, millions of dollars in damages for manslaughter—for the deaths of the people who didn't evacuate because they – of their reassurances that there was nothing to be worried about.

R: That's horrific.

J: Well, i, you know, to play devil's advocate real quick, if there was true negligence—like, if they didn't follow through with things that they needed to do, if they did a terrible job at analyzing the data, in a fashion that – where the data could have been analyzed better, or they actually weren't asking their peers for the information—i can understand if there was extreme negligence.

S: Right.

J: But, even still, like, that's very hard to prove, and I just don't understand –

S: Well, I mean, not really. The question is, was their opinion within the standard for their profession? That's—in my opinion—that's the only real question here. You can't be blamed for being wrong, right? You can't be blamed for a bad outcome if you were following the standard. Now, of course, scientists can't predict earthquakes. You can't predict when an earthquake is going to occur. That's the bottom line. What – every statement they said was truthful, you know, every factual statement. "These tremors do not necessarily mean that there's an earthquake coming, and they are not a reason to evacuate. We don't evacuate every city where there's tremors because there might be a major quake, because it's not that predictive." So, that was not negligent. No, and they weren't really being accused of negligence. They were basically being accused of poorly communicating to the public. It seems to be based on a lot of false premises about what scientists ''can know''—what an expert about, you know, an earthquake, a geologist, expert ''can know''.

R: Yeah, they've been convicted for not using a magical power they don't have.

S: Yeah.

R: They might as well have convicted all the psychics in Italy for not accurately predicting this earthquake.

J: I think we need to be careful—i don't disagree, of course. I don't think that these men should be going to jail for this at all—but it is an important thing to state that, I think, people should go to prison, or get in trouble ''legally'', if they are misrepresenting science or – right? So you see where I'm going with this.

S: Well, yeah. If you are –

J: If you're setting that premise—you're saying, "Hey, these guys screwed up, they didn't do what they were supposed to do, they didn't communicate to us the real possible outcomes here", whatever—and, like –

S: Yeah.

J: – I'll reiterate, I don't think that they should be going to jail—

B: Well, I don't agree –

J: —but, I do think, though, that that standard that that court set needs to be applied all the way down the ladder.

B: Yeah, but, Jay, like, someone saying that "I have a cure for cancer and it's scientifically proven" but it's a sham?

J: Exactly, right? So, if they're going to actually take those scientists out and say "You're done. You're not performing science anymore and you're going to jail for that bad decision or information you gave", well, hello! Then, you know, all of a sudden, a million lawsuits need to be filed.

S: But, it wasn't – to clarify, though, it wasn't ''bad'', it was just ''unlucky''. I mean, doctors encounter this all the time, you know. You are asked to decide, you know, what tests to order, what diagnoses a patient might have. There's a whole lot of liability involved with that. You can't be convicted of malpractice just because of a bad outcome if what you did was within the standard of care.

B: Right.

S: So, was the information they were giving to the public within the standard for the profession? If the answer is "yes", the fact that there was a low-probability earthquake the next week is not their fault.

E: Right.

S: It doesn't change the fact – you know, if they're saying there's a 99% chance that there's not going to be an earthquake, and then the 1% thing happens, they were still right –

J: Yeah.

S: – in saying that it was unlikely.

R: Yeah.

E: Didn't the evidence show, basically, that they performed correctly, essentially? They did not –

S: That's the consensus. I mean, so, there's worldwide outrage, especially among the scientific community (''inaudible'') –

B: This has got to be shot down in a higher court.

S: Yeah.

B: This can't – can't possibly stand.

E: I hope so.

S: Well, there's two appeals left. There's two appeals, and they will stay out of prison before those appeals. So, the United States National Academy of Science, the Royal Academy of Science—the Royal Society, rather—issued a joint statement saying that "that is why we must protest the verdict in Italy. If it becomes a precedent in law, it could lead to a situation in which scientists will be afraid to give expert opinion."

J: Yeah, that's devastating.

E: Mm-hmm.

S: So, it would have a chilling effect. What – you know, what geologist is going to, you know, talk to the public in Italy now, if you could wind up in jail and, you know, financially devastated, and your career devastated, because you can't predict the future, you know, because you don't have a crystal ball? It's insane. It's insane.

J: Yeah. To think that they're going after these scientists, and they're not going after the rampant quackery throughout –

S: Well, there's that, too.

E: I wonder how much pressure they came under from, like, the families, the survivors, of this terrible, terrible devastation –

J: Oh yeah, they had to hang someone.

E: – and I imagine they put a lot of pressure on politicians and other people in order to hold ''somebody'' accountable.

J: They have to. They had to send someone down the river for that.

B: Did they have a trial?

S: Yeah.

B: Did they have witnesses and experts coming in?

S: Yeah. Yep.

B: I'd love to know the details of what exactly happened, because how could –

(''laughter'')

S: So, we'll see if the worldwide backlash has an effect. I mean, again, they do have two appeals left, so we'll definitely follow it.

=== Whale Makes Human Sounds (21:35)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20026938 Beluga whale 'makes human-like sounds']

S: All right, Rebecca, so, we have a cute animal –

R: Thank you.

S: – we're going to talk about now.

J: This is a happy one!

R: Just tell me this narwhal or whatever is alive.

S: It's a whale.

E: It's alive and well.

S: It's a beluga whale.

B: It sort of looks like a narwhal.

R: Tell me this beluga is alive!

E: That's NOC the beluga. They're very much alive.

R: It's not a beluga?

E: "NOC". N-O-C.

S: "NOC". NOC the beluga.

R: Oh! "That's NOC."

(''laughter'')

R: I was about to say, "No, ''that is a beluga''."

S: Sounds like a children's song.

E: It does sound like a children's –

S: Evan, sing it.

E: No.

S: OK.

J: Don't change it! Please don't –

E: If my daughter was here, maybe. But, no. So, what's important about NOC the beluga? Well, OK, so, picture this: You are part of the National Marine Mammal Foundation, OK, and you're in the tank, swimming around with the whales and stuff, and, all of a sudden, you hear somebody—you hear a voice—call your name. Something to the effect that – "Get out of the water! Get out of the water!" So, you're in the tank and you come up and you say, "OK, who told me to get out of the water? Who told me to get out of the water?" And the other scientists and people are looking around you like, "Nobody? What the heck are you talking about?" And, he's like, "Well, I definitely ''heard'' that!" Well, what did he actually hear? Well, apparently, NOC the beluga made some noises very reminiscent of human noises. Beluga whales are, you know, incredible creatures. Their calls – They're known as the canaries of the sea. They have a very high-frequency, high-pitched tone to their noises that they make, but they make lots of different kinds of noises. They can emit up to eleven different kinds of sounds—crackles, whistles, trills, squawks—all sorts of things. But, it's been rumored that these whales can emit noises that sound like humans talking. And, for the first time, they've actually recorded NOC the whale making these noises, and they have it on tape. And we have it on tape.

R: Nah.

(''NOC makes unnervingly human-sounding noises'')

R: Did he maybe just swallow a kazoo?

(''laughter'')

J: Everybody has a drunk neighbor that makes those noises.

(''laughter'')

E: Oh, gosh. Who knows what the heck he was saying? You know, dolphins have been taught to mimic noises that kind of sound like human voices, but, before this, there's been no record of an animal ''spontaneously'' coming up and making these kinds of noises. This is the first evidence, the first hard evidence we have of it.

R: Here's – I have a theory. I have a theory. I have a theory that – so, whales, in general, are incredibly intelligent –

E: Oh yeah.

R: – possibly as smart as us, but they don't want thumbs, or any way to talk to us –

E: Or fire.

R: – and I feel like they do, basically – That's true. No, I saw Spongebob once. There was fire under the sea. I think it can be done.

S: Yep, but they don't have nanotechnology, though.

R: They don't. So, my theory is that whales are basically, like – they have – it's like they have locked-in syndrome, you know? Where they're just –

J: Oh, no.

R: – super-intelligent, and there's all these people around them, and they're just messing with them –

J: So, he was screaming, actually –

R: Yeah! And, so, he's been like, his whole life, he's been in this stupid little – like, he's in captivity, right? So, he's been in this stupid little aquarium, and he's just, like, "I hate all of you! And I'm going to will myself to tell you, because you're too stupid to understand!"

E: So, basically, what's going on here is, the whale has learned to change – rapidly change pressure within its naval cavity in order to create these sounds. And, it hasn't – the whale is able to over-inflate what's known as its vestibular sac in its blowhole, which is normally acts to stop water from basically coming in. So, the whale is going through a lot of, you know, effort, essentially, to try to make these noises. And I'm sure they're going to be trying to figure out exactly, you know, basically, ''why'' is the whale doing this?

S: Well, he just – this whale was – did spend his life in captivity –

E: Yeah.

S: – so, he did hear human speech a lot, and maybe he's just, to some extent, mimicking the sounds that he grew up hearing his whole life.

J: It's definitely – it definitely has a human sound to it, in the cadence and everything.

S: Yeah.

J: I mean, he's intelligent enough to mimic a human, which is really cool.

R: Yeah.

J: And, then, you always think, you know, if he can mimic a human—if his brain is advanced that much—you know, maybe he –

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But, is he mimicking humans or making fun of humans? You know, like people make fun of other languages?

R: Yeah, he's just like "Weh! Weh! Weh! This is what you sound like!"

E: Yeah. You stupid bald monkey and (''inaudible'')! Get out of here!

B: Sounds like a false dichotomy.

=== PANDAS Controversy (26:18)===
* [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/a-pandas-story/ A PANDAS Story]

S: So, we're going to talk about – going from talking about beluga whales to talking about PANDAS! Except, we're not talking about pandas, because we're talking about –

E: Wait.

R: Stop toying with my emotions, Steve!

S: I had to put a cute picture of a panda up there for you, Rebecca. We are talking about pediatric autoimmune –

R: It makes sense.

S: – neuropsychiatric disorder associated with –

E: I didn't know PANDA was an acronym. Cool!

R: Steve, I miss the panda.

S: – streptococcal infection—or, PANDAS. See? There's a panda.

(''laughter, cooing'')

E: Aww!

R: Yay.

S: We're talking about PANDAS –

E: Aww.

R: Boo.

J: Oh.

E: That's worse.

S: – which is a legitimately controversial medical diagnosis! So, essentially, what happens is, children suddenly develop ticks—like Tourette syndrome—and psychiatric disorders—obsessive–compulsive disorder—and it is thought that, in some cases, that it is actually – the inciting event is an infection—bacteria—streptococcal infection. Now, of course, it's always difficult to establish the reality of a new disease. Unless you get all your ducks in a row, and all the, you know, pathology all adds up, it's sometimes difficult to identify a legitimate new syndrome and to prove that – cause and effect. So, correlation is one thing. As we know, correlation is not ''necessarily'' causation. And, so, the syndrome exists. There are – the number of physicians who have identified the sudden onset psychiatric – neuropsychiatric disorder, and in some cases it is temporally associated with a streptococcal infection. But that's not the same thing as saying that the strep infection ''caused'' the neuropsychiatric syndrome. So, that's – and there's the controversy. Now, of course, we live in the modern Internet age. So, as soon as a scientist says, "I think that there's this syndrome—I want to call it PANDAS—and – sort of, you know, a psychiatric syndrome provoked by a bacterial infection", of course, there are now support groups, and there's groups on the Internet, and there's patient groups supporting this diagnosis before the science is even settled. And, then, of course, once that happens, when you try to do more science, or have any kind of discussion about whether or not this is a real syndrome, you have parents and patient groups and advocacy groups, you know, calling you all kinds of nasty names and saying there's a conspiracy against people with PANDAS, it's all the insurance companies and Big Pharma and evil doctors or whatever. So, that's the situation that we're in the middle of right now, unfortunately, is that, before the science is settled, you know, there's the scientific controversy, then there's the public controversy. This came to the media attention recently because of a 16-year-old girl called Elizabeth Wray. She developed, you know, a syndrome like PANDAS with ticks and psychological disorders, was diagnosed by a physician with PANDAS, and then was transferred to Boston's Children's Hospital for – presumably for further treatment of PANDAS. Now, the story that is going around the PANDAS community is that once she got to Boston University—or Boston Children's Hospital—she was told – the parents were told, "We don't believe that PANDAS is real – that it exists", and then they essentially admitted their daughter to the psychiatric unit and started treating her with psychiatric medications. Now, I don't know if that's true, because the doctors and the hospital are not telling their side of the story because of patient confidentiality. So, we don't know what their side of the story is. We only know the parents' side of the story, filtered through the PANDAS community. Unfortunately, now there's – this story has taken on a life of its own. There's a Free Elizabeth Wray movement going on within the PANDAS community, they're telling all kinds of horror stories about Boston Children's Hospital, and, you know, we can't verify any of it. What's interesting in reading about it is that each side has their narrative—and I wrote about this on Science-Based Medicine—because one of the things that – the ideas that we're wrestling with in the skeptical community is that—well, all right, we have, I think, a good approach to critical thinking, we understand a lot about self-deception, about the nature of science and pseudoscience—but we don't always have a good story to tell the public, or we have a hard time convincing mainstream outlets that we have – that our story is an interesting and good one. You know, we have to really market our narrative—the skeptical narrative. When you read about stories like this, the PANDAS proponents have a really compelling emotional narrative. It may be total B.S.—i don't know—but it's very compelling. They have a story of a child suffering from an unusual disease, parents who just want to do what's right for her—I believe all those things are correct—and then they are, essentially, being abused by a dismissive and skeptical medical establishment who doesn't believe in this disease, and that is treating their child with perhaps harmful, you know, psychiatric medications. They even – this went to court. Apparently, the hospital thought that the parents were being negligent in not allowing them to give proper standard of care—psychiatric treatment—to their child, and they wanted to have custody taken away from the parents, and they wanted to admit Elizabeth to a locked psychiatric ward—again, not sure – I can't verify those from the hospital's side of things. A judge – a Massachusetts judge essentially made her a ward of the state while they sorted out what was going on, but they did not grant the hospital their request to treat her in the way that they wanted to. So, they essentially just – the state took her out of everybody's hands for a moment – for the moment. So, it's interesting. Of course, the PANDAS community, again, is up in arms, you know. The court essentially took custody away from these parents that are only trying to do what's right for their daughter. But, of course, you could see the other narrative—you know, let's assume that the physicians think that—even if you think – whether or not you think PANDAS really exists—they think that she has a psychiatric illness, the parents are in denial, they're pursuing this false diagnosis, and they're, you know, refusing standard medical care. That's a story, too.

B: What if you just pulled out the whole strep association, and just treat it like a "pandisorder"? Is their beef that it's associated with strep, and they don't think there's any association? Why don't they just treat it like a neuropsychiatric disorder –

S: Yeah.

B: – and forget about the whole strep association?

S: Well, because the strep association would lead you to treat with things like antibiotics. So, that's the question: Should you treat it with antibiotics, or should you treat her like a psychiatric (''inaudible'') patient?

J: Why not both? I mean, why wouldn't you –

S: Well, she has had at least one round of antibiotics. You can also treat it like an autoimmune disease, with, like, intravenous globulin, for example. So, I mean, these are real medical questions. Do we treat it like an infection, do we treat it like a post-infectious auto-immune disease, or do we treat it like a psychiatric disorder? Those are real questions.

J: Steve, are you saying pandas don't exist? Let me just get this straight.

(''laughter'')

S: So, well, I did – to give a serious answer to your sarcastic question, I did –

R: My favorite kind.

S: – take the opportunity – I'm good that way. I'm good that way. I did take the opportunity just to familiarize myself with the PANDAS literature—again, I always emphasize, I'm no an expert in this, but I can read the literature and give my opinion like a science journalist—i think it's genuinely controversial. When I read the research, there's lots of – the ducks are not in a row. So, when you do things like treat kids who apparently have PANDAS with antibiotics in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, they don't necessarily improve. And, if you look for the antibodies that are supposed to be there, they don't necessarily correlate with the disease onset or with the existence of strep. So –

B: So, this is clearly not like autism and vaccines. It's just more complicated than that.

S: So, no. So, right. So, autism and vaccines, like, I would say, that's been studied enough to say that autism's – that autism is not caused by vaccines. We can say that. We can make the negative statement. I cannot make the negative statement that PANDAS does not exist, only that the research so far has not reached the threshold where we can agree that it does exist and that there is some actual negative data—there's some positive data, too—so it's legitimately controversial. It did remind me, though, of the chronic Lyme disease controversy—

R: Yeah.

S: —which is very common in New England—again, where they think that a number of symptoms, including neurological symptoms, can be caused by a bacterial infection and treated with antibiotics. And the same – there's a lot of overlap in those two communities, you know.

J: Steve, are you saying that the public has unrealistic expectations?

S: Well, I think – it's partly that. I mean, I think the public is uncomfortable with the uncertainty, and they like this sort of hero–villain narrative, so they paint the medical community as the villains, and—except for those maverick physicians who understand. They're Lyme-literate, or they understand PANDAS, so they're the heroes—and, then, the insurance companies don't want to pay for, you know, over-and-over recurrent courses of IV antibiotics, so they're the villains, you know. They're not—I'm not defending insurance companies, but sometimes they actually – sometimes they're right. They don't want to pay for things that are not science-based or evidence-based. So, it's complicated. And, you know, how do we – so, how do we deal with a child with this disorder when we don't know what the best scientific answer is—we don't know if it's autoimmune, infectious, or psychiatric? We just have to, you know, do the best we can—and there may be different physicians who would take different approaches—but to portray it as "PANDAS definitely exists. If you don't believe in it, you're dismissive and you're mean and evil, or you're protecting some kind of Big Pharma grant that you're getting"—they always bring that up—rather than saying, "You know, we really want to know the right answer, but we just haven't found it yet. It's still – it's legitimately controversial."

J: Yeah, I think what you're saying does confirm what I was thinking, is that the public wants an answer, science is not yet done figuring this one out, and –

S: Yeah. Like the earthquake one, right?

J: Yeah.

S: Sometimes the answer is, "We don't know yet", you know. "We need to do more research". In medicine, we have to make decisions with imperfect, you know, information, so, you know.

J: Wouldn't it be typical, too – like, let's say that this is happening over and over again –

S: Yeah.

J: – like, at some point, some doctors are going to come up with different ideas, they're going to try it out, you know. The trial-and-error process happens, and—i hate to say it, but—this girl is probably going to be one of the people that gets tested on with new ideas.

S: Well, I mean – well, if you're really testing then you should be doing a research protocol. If you're just applying the best knowledge that we have to an individual patient, that's – a certain amount of trial and error with that that's not really experimentation. So, there is a difference there. So, I don't know. The other interesting question that I'm kind of alluding to is, what role do the patient or the advocacy groups play? I think, a lot of times, that they are helpful in raising awareness for a disease or a disorder and raising funding, and advocating for patients. You know, I've seen, I think, there's a lot of very effective, very good patient advocacy groups out there. But, sometimes, they put their nickel down on a specific scientific answer, and that's not their job.

J: Yeah.

S: It's not their job to predict or demand that science give them the answer they want. And, you know, unfortunately, some people want the answer to be "an infection"—not "genes", not, you know, "We don't know".

J: Yeah. It's curable. That's the one they want.

S: Of course, who – that's the answer I would want to have! "It's something outside that is, you know, foreign, that can be cured, and that can reverse my child to the way that they were". Who – every parent wants that to be the answer, but sometimes you – you know, you have to step back from what you want and listen to the evidence. That's the – that's the scientist's, that's the physician's job, you know. You should just let them do their job, you know.

J: All right, so, I want to bring up a quick side point on this.

S: Yeah.

J: So, as an example, let's say, fifty years ago, let's say this was happening. What stance do you think the public would have differently than what we're seeing today?

S: It's the same, and this ''did'' happen fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, you know, she would be diagnosed with neurosyphilis—maybe not somebody who was sixteen, but that was the stand-in for what we now would, you know, the same subculture would diagnose with chronic Lyme. There were believers in that. There were physicians who believed in treatments like chelation therapy, you know, and science proved it wrong, and they said, "Well, we don't care, we're going to still do it. We're going to come up with – We're just going to keep coming up with special pleading and alternate theories, and form our own societies and our own – and just keep doing it, and say that it's all a conspiracy."

J: Mm-hmm.

S: So, but, I think that it's just the turnaround time is so much faster because of the Internet. Like, another example: CCSVI, right? The alleged blockage in the veins that drained blood from the brain, causing multiple sclerosis. It's that – that whole process—of Dr. Zamboni proposing this entity and a treatment, to it being researched, to it being refuted, to, you know, patient advocacy groups springing up and calling for conspiracies and calling for research and demanding that science give them the answer that they want—all has taken place within a few years. We've seen that cycle happen right before our eyes. So, the Internet is just making it happen a lot quicker and a lot bigger, I think. But it's always been this way.

J: So do you have any ideas on what we could do? Could the skeptical community do anything to help this (''inaudible'')?

S: Well, I think what we do is, we discuss the issue from a science, logical, critical thinking point of view, you know. We point out the role of science in this, and we, I think, we try to bring the public discourse to a level that can deal with it in a more productive way, rather than the conspiracy mongering, sort of lowest-common-denominator that it would otherwise sink to.

J: Yeah.

=== Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44)===
* pnd

{{transcribing
|transcriber = Cornelioid
}}

S: Well, let's move on. Jay, we're talking about how the media presents stories about paranormal activities.

J: Yeah, this is interesting. So, a professor decided to – Professor Brewer decided that—because what we're seeing over the years is a very obvious interest, in the general public, to news articles, and to TV shows, that talk about ghosts; and, you know, we've all seen the ''Ghost Hunter'' TV show, and, to people like us, at best, we watch it, and it's fun, right? 'Cause it's ridiculous and entertaining, and we like to see people from our perspective—a skeptical perspective—they're acting foolishly. But, there are a lot of people that are watching this, and they're riveted. Like, they really love it and they think a lot of it's real—and, i'm sure, to a certain degree, i can't say everyone that watches it and thinks everything about it is real—but, in the end, there's a huge entertainment factor there, and, unfortunately, to us skeptics, we feel like there's a lot of people that simply believe it, and that's their favorite entertainment. And i know a lot of people—I'm friends with a lot of people—that literally have active discussions on Facebook all the time, that i dip into, that are talking about the latest TAPS show. We'll be, "Can you believe it?" and "I knew that place was haunted!", and they're like, you know, getting whooped up.

S: I don't get it. I just don't get it. Nothing happens!

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

R: That's not true! That's not true.

E:

S: But they never find a ghost.

R: Steve, Steve. Did you feel that?

(''laughter'')

R: That happens! That happens all the time.

(''applause'')

R: They feel so much.

J: The thing is, you know –

S: I want to see a full, floating torso drift across the camera lens. Then i'll be impressed.

B: I still won't believe it.

S: No, but at least it'll be entertaining.

J: A lot of the shows, though, they're all right on the cusp, you know? They're always ''just'' seeing something, or something ''just'' falls over, you know? Or there's a noise from upstairs, or whatever, and it's never – they never give you that.

R: This, actually – this came up—tomorrow i'll be talking about the [http://paranormalroadtrip.org/ paranormal road trip] i just went on with Jon Ronson and Richard Wiseman that got us here—and, at one of the stops, we were at a – we did talk to someone in a "haunted museum", and she was telling us that "the ghost hunters were there, and it was very exciting because there was a noise in the attic, and there were steps (''step sounds'') even though nobody was up there, and so the ghost hunter ran over and climbed up the ladder and looked into the attic, and, just then, a lady, dressed all in white, came ''flying at him'', and he shrieked in horror and fell down the ladder, and it was all really dramatic", and we were just completely blown away, obviously. We were riveted. And we said, "We cannot ''wait'' to see that footage!" "Actually, i mean, it was so good, they didn't get that on camera. No, all the cameras were down in another room somewhere."

R: "There's literally no evidence "

S: Ed Warren. We were investigating Ed Warren, and he told us this story of being in a haunted house, and they had a local news crew over there, and, for like two hours, they videotaped things flying around the room, you know, really impressive, you know, smoking-gun evidence of paranormal activity. We're like, "Great! Can we see that footage?"

J: "Yeah!"

S: "You know what? They taped over it for the news segment later that night."

(''laughter'')

S: Go – go figure. Stupid news crew.

J: So, i – i'm going to ask a couple of questions that i want you guys to not answer right now, but just think about it, 'cause these are pretty obvious questions, but i think they're interesting. "Why do people believe, or like to believe, in the paranormal? What's the attraction?" It's an interesting question if you think about it. There are people who ''really'' seek it out and love it. And there's something exciting about it, something kind of visceral about it. To my mind—to a skeptical mind—i don't have a connection to it. I just don't see what that allure is, other than, maybe—because i do like horror movies, and i do like to get scared. I love being actually scared in a movie theater. It doesn't happen that often, but when it does happen it's very thrilling—and, maybe they're just having a lot of those thrilling moments. It's easier for them to get scared.

R: But, also, i mean, don't you think, maybe, it's got something to do with the fact that, maybe, we're not going to rot in the ground and die and never see our loved ones again? maybe?

J: I'm not going to say no, but when i think about it, there's something thrilling about it. I'm not thinking, as i'm being thrilled in a horror movie, "Oh, i'm defying death by being thrilled right now!" It's not happening. I'm just – there is something – it's like eating something really spicy that hurts.

B:

J: It hurts, but it's good at the same time, right?

E: Uh.

S: To a lot of people, definitely, evidence of ghosts is evidence of the afterlife. That's the appeal.

R: Yeah, and when we talk to people who describe their own experiences often—they're talking about Grandma and Grandpa and whatnot coming back to them and telling them that it's all OK—you know, and they're very comforting messages –

J: Yeah, which is why

E: Which is why they watch these shows. It reinforces these positions that these people have, you know, and they derive a certain, you know, need –

J: I wonder, though, because those shows are so bad! They're so bad.

R: No, no, no! Personally, i would derive a lot of happiness from knowing that my dearly beloved grandmother, who i adored when i was young—she died when i was young—i would get so much happiness knowing that she was just screwing around with asshole ghosthunters on TV. Just, like, brushing past them and disappearing whenever the cameras come out. That would give me a lot of satisfaction, knowing that.

== Live Q&A (51:06) ==
* Questions from the CSICon audience

== Science or Fiction (55:19) ==

S: Item number one. A new study finds that astronauts who spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. Item number two. Scientists have discovered the first feathered dinosaur in the western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers. And item number three. Researchers find that, at the molecular level, evolutionary changes can be highly predictable.

== Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:08:11) ==
<blockquote>Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.</blockquote>
J: Paul Kurtz!

{{Outro1}}

== References ==
<references/>

{{Navigation}}

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-08T04:25:49Z

Cornelioid: /* Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44) */ partial segment

{{LatestEpisode}}
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{{InfoBox
|episodeTitle = SGU Episode 381
|episodeDate = 3rd November 2012 
|episodeIcon = File:KurtzPic2.jpg 
|previous = 
|next = 
|rebecca = y 
|bob = y 
|jay = y 
|evan = y 
|guest1 = RW: Richard Wiseman
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|downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2012-11-03.mp3
|notesLink = http://www.theskepticsguide.org/archive/podcastinfo.aspx?mid=1&pid=381
|forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,43845.0.html
|qowText = Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality. 
|qowAuthor = [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] 
|}}

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

RW: – a live edition of my favorite podcast and radio show. So, we're going to have Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Jay Novella, Even Bernstein, and – and a woman –

(''laughter'')

RW: – join us. It's the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe!

(''applause'')

S: Hello, and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

(''applause'')

S: Today is Thursday, October 25th, 2012, and we are live from [http://www.csiconference.org/ CSICon 2012].

(''applause'')

Joining me, as always, are Bob Novella –

B: Hey everybody!

(''cheers'')

S: – Rebecca Watson –

R: Hello, everyone!

(''cheers'')

''audience member'': I love you, Rebecca!

R: I love you, too!

S: – Jay Novella...Jay Novella –

J: Wooooo! Rebecca, yeah!

(''cheers'')

R: I love you, Jay!

S: – and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hello, Nashville!

(''cheers'')

S: So, how're you guys doing? How do you like Nashville?

J: It's awesome. I didn't – I thought people were going to literally be playing guitar when I got off the airplane.

B: Oh, come on, Jay.

S: Yeah, in the airport, you know?

J: Yeah.

== This Day in Skepticism (1:28) ==
November 3, 1957 Sputnik 2 launched

S: So, Rebecca, you always start us off with a This Day in Science and Skepticism. This show will be going up on November 3rd, so, did anything happen that day?

R: Nope.

(''laughter'')

B: Ever?

R: Oh, all right. One thing happened. One thing happened! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_2 Sputnik 2] happened.

S: ''Sputnik 2: The Revenge''.

(''laughter'')

R: ''Son of Sputnik''.

S: ''Son of Sputnik''.

J: ''Son of Sputnik''!

R: That's right. Sputnik 2 you might know as "the one that killed the puppy".

(''awwws'')

R: No? Aww, that's weird, 'cause I really thought that this would go over well at a live event! Yeah, Sputnik 2 is the craft that took Laika into orbit, Laika being the Soviet space dog who became the first animal in orbit—for about, like, 10 minutes, before she died.

E: Well, you know –

S: A couple of hours. It was a couple of hours. They thought he was going to survive for about ten days –

R: I think she's a "she".

S: – ''she'' was going to survive –

E: Eh.

R: Get it right, Steve!

S: You know, asexual Russian names, I mean, come on. But, they thought that Laika was going to survive for about ten days, but then they had a little mishap with the cooling system, and –

E: Oops.

S: Yeah. – got a little hot in the capsule—104 degrees, they said in (''inaudible'')

E: That'd be a hot dog. Yep.

(''groans'')

B: Oh, come on. My god.

E: Thank you. I'll be here all the weekend.

R: How – can we just take a moment, just to take a poll of the audience: How are our dead dog jokes doing? Good?

J: Yes!

(''applause'')

R: OK. All right. Yeah.

J: You know what? I didn't know until we researched this item that it was a one-way mission.

R: Yeah.

E: Mm-hmm.

J: That's really nasty.

S: Well, the capsule returned.

(''laughter'')

E: Yeah, well –

S: About 162 days later, it burned up in the atmosphere. But, yeah, they never intended to bring Laika back.

J: No, they actually were going to euthanize her with poison food after the tenth day, I think, right?

R: This is seriously the worst item ever. What was I thinking when I picked it?

S: There – there's Laika.

E: Aww. Aww.

R: Oh yeah! I didn't pick it! Steve forced me to!

E: But, we'd never know who this dog was if it didn't go on Sputnik 2, right? I mean, this would be an otherwise – another animal.

R: No, yeah, and I'm sure Laika appreciates the fame she gets from ''beyond the grave''.

E: She got her fifteen minutes.

== In Memorium ==
=== Paul Kurtz (3:45) ===
* 1925-2012

S: Well, we are going to start the new segment of the show with an ''in memoriam''. We do like to, on the ''Skeptic's Guide'', pause to remember those members of the skeptical community who have passed, and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] died several days ago, just the day before the organizers were coming down to the conference. He died on Sunday. He was 85 years old. It was 1925 to 2012, so that is 86. I can do math. (''audience laughter'') You'll know why i was confused in a moment.

R: 'Cause you're terrible at math?

S: Yes. So, before we get the show started, Ron Lindsay and Kendrick Frazier talked about Paul Kurtz. You know, he was one of the giants of the skeptical movement, of the skeptical community. You know, he was largely responsible for organizing the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, founding Prometheus Books, CFI, [http://www.secularhumanism.org/ Secular Humanism]. He was an academic, a philosopher. He really gave a lot of weight to the movement early on. He made it to that – he broke it to that next level. It wasn't that, you know, before he came on board. So he has to be remembered for that. We did have some interactions with Paul along the years. The first year that we started – (''audience cooing'')

R: Baby Steve!

E: Aww.

S: I was a little younger back then.

R: He's three years old there.

B: He's only half-grey there.

S: (''laughing'') I'm only half-grey!

E: A little less grey, yep.

S: You can mark my age by my greyness up until about ten years ago, when i went totally grey. Right when we got started, in 1996, you know, CSICOP, now CSI, you know, they were the big national skeptical organization. They'd definitely – They took us under their wing, you know, gave us their support, their local membership list, so that we could get our movement going. And i remember meeting Paul at the first World Skeptics Conference, and he was immediately—like, you know, your grandfather—like, you know, very, very comfortably took on that air of being a mentor. It's like, "Yeah, this is great. You're welcome to the skeptical movement." So i definitely remember him fondly in that way. A few years later, Paul organized a meeting of the local skeptical groups. In the picture here you can see me again with Bob, Perry, and Evan. The four of us came up together –

J: Now, if i remember correctly, Rebecca, you and i were off being badass somewhere else, right?

R: I think that's what was happening, yeah.

S: – and, i think, in the foreground, that's Colonel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Nickell Joe Nickell], isn't it?

E: Colonel.

S: Yeah, he had broke his leg in Spain, or something?

R: Round of applause for Colonel Joe Nickell!

E: I remember that.

(''applause'')

S: Joe actually is going to come up, and he's going to read a poem that he wrote, i believe, about Paul.

JN: Paul was a great supporter of the arts, and i hope he would have liked this. The poem is called "Book of Seasons: An elegy". (''Uncertain re: permission to reproduce poem'')

S: Thank you, Joe.

=== Leon Jaroff (7:34) ===
* 1926-2012

S: This same weekend, Saturday before the show, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_(magazine) Leon Jaroff] also died. ''He'' was 85, hence my confusion. So, Leon Jariff—not a big name in the skeptical community recently, and if you ask, you know, people at conventions like this if they knew who he was – I mean, in fact, right before the show Rebecca said to me, "Who's Leon Jaroff?"

R: (''indignant gasp'')

S: Sorry, Rebecca.

(''audience laughter'')

S: But he was perhaps one of the most skeptical journalists that we have had.

B: Yeah.

S: He was the science columnist for ''Time Magazine''. It was he who said, "You know, popularizing science is important, you know, we should start a science-dedicated magazine." And that was ''Discover Magazine''. That was him. He was not afraid to be a hard-nosed skeptic when writing about scientific issues. So, for example, when writing about chiropractors, [http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,213482,00.html he wrote],

<blockquote>
Chiropractors also employ a bewildering variety of weird practices to diagnose their patients. Some use applied kinesiology, a muscle test that supposedly can diagnose allergies and diseased organs. Hair analysis and iris readings are commonplace in the profession. Even sillier are many of the treatments that chiropractors use and recommend: homeopathic potions, colon irrigation, magnetic therapy, enzyme pills, colored-light therapy, and something called "balancing body energy," among other mystical procedures with undocumented effects.
</blockquote>

S: That's from a mainstream journalist writing in ''Time Magazine''. Do we see this kind of thing today? I don't think so.

B: Nope.

(''audience applause'')

S: So, you know, we do have to, I think, also note the support that Jaroff gave to such a good science journalism, and that kind of hard-nosed, skeptical science journalism is definitely something we miss. That's a void that, I think, that we in the skeptical community have to fill, but, unfortunately, it is a void.

== News Items ==
=== Big Bang Conference at CERN (9:31)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19870036 Big Bang and religion mixed in Cern debate]

S: Rebecca –

R: Yes!

S: – this is a different quote. It's not as good a quote.

<blockquote>
Science in isolation is great for producing stuff, but not so good for producing ideas.
</blockquote>

R: Mm-hmm.

S: Who said that?

R: That was said by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Pinsent Andrew Pinsent] at the Ramsey Center for Science and Religion. What I particularly liked about this quote is that it is completely reversed – it is the exact opposite of what I would have suggested.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I would say that science is actually really good at ideas, but, in order to produce stuff, you have to add something else. You know, like, they might be able to figure out lasers, but to make a CD player you need a marketing executive.

S: Or death ray.

R: Thank you. Yeah, of course. Why didn't I go there first?

(''laughter'')

R: Yeah, so, this quote comes from a recent article that the BBC produced: "Big Bang and religion mixed in CERN debates". Apparently, there was a conference recently that CERN held—you remember CERN, you know, the guys who, apparently, may have found –

J: Higgs!

R: – the Higgs boson.

S: A boson with Higgs-like properties.

R: A Higgs-like thing.

S: Boson, yeah.

R: A Higgish. I like "Higgish" –

B: "Higgish"?

R: – a little bit.

J: (''laughing'') "A little bit!"

S: "Higgy"?

B: (''singing, inaudible'') ''Higgy again."

R: So, yes. Apparently, I don't know the purpose – I don't know what, who dreamt this up, but what I'm thinking is that someone was concerned that they may have found a particle that many people know as the "God particle", and, so, they're concerned that they're going to be excommunicated or, you know, that people will rebel—religious people will rebel—against science. Basically, we'll have some sort of Dark Ages–esque thing happening, and, so, maybe somebody at CERN thought, "Well, we should have this conference where we talk about how religious people should be OK with the Higgs boson."

B: Mm-hmm.

R: So, those are the good intentions that I'm assuming are behind this conference that has speakers such as this. The quotes in here are pretty fun, and none of them have any amount of intelligence to them. Steve, you're the one who brought this one to my attention here –

S: Yes.

R: I'm interested in what – we've talked a little bit before about things like the Templeton Foundation, which is an organization that gives out a prize – gives out prizes to people who can explore science in a religious context, basically. And I'm a bit opposed to it. I feel like it's muddying the waters. I think we don't ''need'' to bring religion into what people are doing at CERN.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I think those two things are happily separated, but I'm interested in knowing your feelings on this.

S: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think trying to introduce theology into science is misguided. You know, this conference was specifically about the origin of the universe. So, it's not just about scientific issues in particular. I think the thinking, at least on the part of the theologians who were quoted about this conference, is that, well, you're talking about the origin of the universe. That's a really big question, and religion is about answering the really big questions—not science. Science is narrow and reductionist, and makes stuff, but can't really grapple with the big questions of our origins. And that's exactly incorrect, as you were saying. That's a complete knock to science. I mean, science is, in fact, the only human intellectual endeavor that ''can'' answer any empirical question about the origin of the universe.

R: Yeah.

J: So, was the conference, though, the scientists trying to appease religious people? The saying that –

R: Well, you know, apparently, this was – the conference was done on the part of CERN, according to BBC, and that's what I find troubling. I'm totally OK with a conference that religious people host, you know, and the topic might be "How do we –" you know, "How do we consider our theology now that we know ''X'', ''Y'', and ''Z''—now that science has discovered this? What does that mean for ''our'' belief system?" And I think that's fine, but, you know, apparently, the theologians who were there seem to think that this was a chance to ''debate'' the scientists –

J: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

R: – and, no! Why would you do that? Debate is completely the opposite direction of where you want to go.

S: It also – I mean, the quotes seem to me like a desperate grasp at relevance, trying to make it seem like they're – you know, that theology is still relevant to questions about origins of the universe, when, in fact, science has completely displaced it from that endeavor.

J: So, did it end up with, like, a fistfight? Like, what happened?

(''laughter'')

E: Science won.

R: I haven't found any evidence of any arrests, so, apparently –

S: There were no fisticuffs?

J: That really must've been awkward as hell, though, right? Like, they're like, sitting there, like, after a whole day, and they're like, "Uh, OK, it's over now."

E: Something tells me they're not going to be doing this again. They're going to learn from this.

S: I don't know.

R: Well, I mean, it's actually not even – like, I wish it had been that exciting. But, instead, it just seems like it was really ''boring'' –

E: Yeah.

R: – and nobody came to ''any'' conclusions. Because you ''can't'', you know?

S: Yeah.

R: You're just having a discussion of, like, well, you know, "But what don't we know?"

=== Italian Earthquake Scientists Convicted (14:57)===
* [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/22/us-italy-earthquake-court-idUSBRE89L13V20121022 Italian scientists convicted over earthquake warning]

S: Now, we're trying to keep – we like to keep our live shows really light –

(''laughter'')

E: So far, so good.

S: So, we thought we'd talk about a horrible earthquake that killed over three hundred people.

E: Yeah, let's go there.

R: Good intro. Good intro there.

S: But there's actually a better story embedded in that. There were six Italian scientists, who were recently convicted of manslaughter –

B: Yeah.

S: – for failure to properly communicate the warnings about the upcoming L'Aquila earthquake in 2009. Yeah, we've been following this story, you know, since it happened. The quick version is that there were a number of small tremors in this very earthquake-prone part of Italy, and the geologists—the local geologists—you know, were following it. And their opinion was that, well, these tremors are very common. Most such tremors are not followed by major quakes. Most major quakes are not preceded by these kinds of tremors. So, the probability of a major quake occurring is not particularly higher, you know, now, just because of these tremors, than at any time, and, therefore, there's no cause for alarm. Now, they were specifically asked during a press conference, "Should we panic?" You know, "Should we evacuate?" And they said "No. There's no reason to evacuate. Stay at home and drink a glass of wine."

B: Steve, was this about a year ago that we covered this?

S: 2009. 2009 –

B: Oh, wow. (''inaudible'')

S: – so, was the quake, and then the court trial started about a year ago, and now the decision came down that the six scientists were convicted to six years – I think six years in prison and something like, you know, millions of dollars in damages for manslaughter—for the deaths of the people who didn't evacuate because they – of their reassurances that there was nothing to be worried about.

R: That's horrific.

J: Well, i, you know, to play devil's advocate real quick, if there was true negligence—like, if they didn't follow through with things that they needed to do, if they did a terrible job at analyzing the data, in a fashion that – where the data could have been analyzed better, or they actually weren't asking their peers for the information—i can understand if there was extreme negligence.

S: Right.

J: But, even still, like, that's very hard to prove, and I just don't understand –

S: Well, I mean, not really. The question is, was their opinion within the standard for their profession? That's—in my opinion—that's the only real question here. You can't be blamed for being wrong, right? You can't be blamed for a bad outcome if you were following the standard. Now, of course, scientists can't predict earthquakes. You can't predict when an earthquake is going to occur. That's the bottom line. What – every statement they said was truthful, you know, every factual statement. "These tremors do not necessarily mean that there's an earthquake coming, and they are not a reason to evacuate. We don't evacuate every city where there's tremors because there might be a major quake, because it's not that predictive." So, that was not negligent. No, and they weren't really being accused of negligence. They were basically being accused of poorly communicating to the public. It seems to be based on a lot of false premises about what scientists ''can know''—what an expert about, you know, an earthquake, a geologist, expert ''can know''.

R: Yeah, they've been convicted for not using a magical power they don't have.

S: Yeah.

R: They might as well have convicted all the psychics in Italy for not accurately predicting this earthquake.

J: I think we need to be careful—i don't disagree, of course. I don't think that these men should be going to jail for this at all—but it is an important thing to state that, I think, people should go to prison, or get in trouble ''legally'', if they are misrepresenting science or – right? So you see where I'm going with this.

S: Well, yeah. If you are –

J: If you're setting that premise—you're saying, "Hey, these guys screwed up, they didn't do what they were supposed to do, they didn't communicate to us the real possible outcomes here", whatever—and, like –

S: Yeah.

J: – I'll reiterate, I don't think that they should be going to jail—

B: Well, I don't agree –

J: —but, I do think, though, that that standard that that court set needs to be applied all the way down the ladder.

B: Yeah, but, Jay, like, someone saying that "I have a cure for cancer and it's scientifically proven" but it's a sham?

J: Exactly, right? So, if they're going to actually take those scientists out and say "You're done. You're not performing science anymore and you're going to jail for that bad decision or information you gave", well, hello! Then, you know, all of a sudden, a million lawsuits need to be filed.

S: But, it wasn't – to clarify, though, it wasn't ''bad'', it was just ''unlucky''. I mean, doctors encounter this all the time, you know. You are asked to decide, you know, what tests to order, what diagnoses a patient might have. There's a whole lot of liability involved with that. You can't be convicted of malpractice just because of a bad outcome if what you did was within the standard of care.

B: Right.

S: So, was the information they were giving to the public within the standard for the profession? If the answer is "yes", the fact that there was a low-probability earthquake the next week is not their fault.

E: Right.

S: It doesn't change the fact – you know, if they're saying there's a 99% chance that there's not going to be an earthquake, and then the 1% thing happens, they were still right –

J: Yeah.

S: – in saying that it was unlikely.

R: Yeah.

E: Didn't the evidence show, basically, that they performed correctly, essentially? They did not –

S: That's the consensus. I mean, so, there's worldwide outrage, especially among the scientific community (''inaudible'') –

B: This has got to be shot down in a higher court.

S: Yeah.

B: This can't – can't possibly stand.

E: I hope so.

S: Well, there's two appeals left. There's two appeals, and they will stay out of prison before those appeals. So, the United States National Academy of Science, the Royal Academy of Science—the Royal Society, rather—issued a joint statement saying that "that is why we must protest the verdict in Italy. If it becomes a precedent in law, it could lead to a situation in which scientists will be afraid to give expert opinion."

J: Yeah, that's devastating.

E: Mm-hmm.

S: So, it would have a chilling effect. What – you know, what geologist is going to, you know, talk to the public in Italy now, if you could wind up in jail and, you know, financially devastated, and your career devastated, because you can't predict the future, you know, because you don't have a crystal ball? It's insane. It's insane.

J: Yeah. To think that they're going after these scientists, and they're not going after the rampant quackery throughout –

S: Well, there's that, too.

E: I wonder how much pressure they came under from, like, the families, the survivors, of this terrible, terrible devastation –

J: Oh yeah, they had to hang someone.

E: – and I imagine they put a lot of pressure on politicians and other people in order to hold ''somebody'' accountable.

J: They have to. They had to send someone down the river for that.

B: Did they have a trial?

S: Yeah.

B: Did they have witnesses and experts coming in?

S: Yeah. Yep.

B: I'd love to know the details of what exactly happened, because how could –

(''laughter'')

S: So, we'll see if the worldwide backlash has an effect. I mean, again, they do have two appeals left, so we'll definitely follow it.

=== Whale Makes Human Sounds (21:35)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20026938 Beluga whale 'makes human-like sounds']

S: All right, Rebecca, so, we have a cute animal –

R: Thank you.

S: – we're going to talk about now.

J: This is a happy one!

R: Just tell me this narwhal or whatever is alive.

S: It's a whale.

E: It's alive and well.

S: It's a beluga whale.

B: It sort of looks like a narwhal.

R: Tell me this beluga is alive!

E: That's NOC the beluga. They're very much alive.

R: It's not a beluga?

E: "NOC". N-O-C.

S: "NOC". NOC the beluga.

R: Oh! "That's NOC."

(''laughter'')

R: I was about to say, "No, ''that is a beluga''."

S: Sounds like a children's song.

E: It does sound like a children's –

S: Evan, sing it.

E: No.

S: OK.

J: Don't change it! Please don't –

E: If my daughter was here, maybe. But, no. So, what's important about NOC the beluga? Well, OK, so, picture this: You are part of the National Marine Mammal Foundation, OK, and you're in the tank, swimming around with the whales and stuff, and, all of a sudden, you hear somebody—you hear a voice—call your name. Something to the effect that – "Get out of the water! Get out of the water!" So, you're in the tank and you come up and you say, "OK, who told me to get out of the water? Who told me to get out of the water?" And the other scientists and people are looking around you like, "Nobody? What the heck are you talking about?" And, he's like, "Well, I definitely ''heard'' that!" Well, what did he actually hear? Well, apparently, NOC the beluga made some noises very reminiscent of human noises. Beluga whales are, you know, incredible creatures. Their calls – They're known as the canaries of the sea. They have a very high-frequency, high-pitched tone to their noises that they make, but they make lots of different kinds of noises. They can emit up to eleven different kinds of sounds—crackles, whistles, trills, squawks—all sorts of things. But, it's been rumored that these whales can emit noises that sound like humans talking. And, for the first time, they've actually recorded NOC the whale making these noises, and they have it on tape. And we have it on tape.

R: Nah.

(''NOC makes unnervingly human-sounding noises'')

R: Did he maybe just swallow a kazoo?

(''laughter'')

J: Everybody has a drunk neighbor that makes those noises.

(''laughter'')

E: Oh, gosh. Who knows what the heck he was saying? You know, dolphins have been taught to mimic noises that kind of sound like human voices, but, before this, there's been no record of an animal ''spontaneously'' coming up and making these kinds of noises. This is the first evidence, the first hard evidence we have of it.

R: Here's – I have a theory. I have a theory. I have a theory that – so, whales, in general, are incredibly intelligent –

E: Oh yeah.

R: – possibly as smart as us, but they don't want thumbs, or any way to talk to us –

E: Or fire.

R: – and I feel like they do, basically – That's true. No, I saw Spongebob once. There was fire under the sea. I think it can be done.

S: Yep, but they don't have nanotechnology, though.

R: They don't. So, my theory is that whales are basically, like – they have – it's like they have locked-in syndrome, you know? Where they're just –

J: Oh, no.

R: – super-intelligent, and there's all these people around them, and they're just messing with them –

J: So, he was screaming, actually –

R: Yeah! And, so, he's been like, his whole life, he's been in this stupid little – like, he's in captivity, right? So, he's been in this stupid little aquarium, and he's just, like, "I hate all of you! And I'm going to will myself to tell you, because you're too stupid to understand!"

E: So, basically, what's going on here is, the whale has learned to change – rapidly change pressure within its naval cavity in order to create these sounds. And, it hasn't – the whale is able to over-inflate what's known as its vestibular sac in its blowhole, which is normally acts to stop water from basically coming in. So, the whale is going through a lot of, you know, effort, essentially, to try to make these noises. And I'm sure they're going to be trying to figure out exactly, you know, basically, ''why'' is the whale doing this?

S: Well, he just – this whale was – did spend his life in captivity –

E: Yeah.

S: – so, he did hear human speech a lot, and maybe he's just, to some extent, mimicking the sounds that he grew up hearing his whole life.

J: It's definitely – it definitely has a human sound to it, in the cadence and everything.

S: Yeah.

J: I mean, he's intelligent enough to mimic a human, which is really cool.

R: Yeah.

J: And, then, you always think, you know, if he can mimic a human—if his brain is advanced that much—you know, maybe he –

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But, is he mimicking humans or making fun of humans? You know, like people make fun of other languages?

R: Yeah, he's just like "Weh! Weh! Weh! This is what you sound like!"

E: Yeah. You stupid bald monkey and (''inaudible'')! Get out of here!

B: Sounds like a false dichotomy.

=== PANDAS Controversy (26:18)===
* [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/a-pandas-story/ A PANDAS Story]

S: So, we're going to talk about – going from talking about beluga whales to talking about PANDAS! Except, we're not talking about pandas, because we're talking about –

E: Wait.

R: Stop toying with my emotions, Steve!

S: I had to put a cute picture of a panda up there for you, Rebecca. We are talking about pediatric autoimmune –

R: It makes sense.

S: – neuropsychiatric disorder associated with –

E: I didn't know PANDA was an acronym. Cool!

R: Steve, I miss the panda.

S: – streptococcal infection—or, PANDAS. See? There's a panda.

(''laughter, cooing'')

E: Aww!

R: Yay.

S: We're talking about PANDAS –

E: Aww.

R: Boo.

J: Oh.

E: That's worse.

S: – which is a legitimately controversial medical diagnosis! So, essentially, what happens is, children suddenly develop ticks—like Tourette syndrome—and psychiatric disorders—obsessive–compulsive disorder—and it is thought that, in some cases, that it is actually – the inciting event is an infection—bacteria—streptococcal infection. Now, of course, it's always difficult to establish the reality of a new disease. Unless you get all your ducks in a row, and all the, you know, pathology all adds up, it's sometimes difficult to identify a legitimate new syndrome and to prove that – cause and effect. So, correlation is one thing. As we know, correlation is not ''necessarily'' causation. And, so, the syndrome exists. There are – the number of physicians who have identified the sudden onset psychiatric – neuropsychiatric disorder, and in some cases it is temporally associated with a streptococcal infection. But that's not the same thing as saying that the strep infection ''caused'' the neuropsychiatric syndrome. So, that's – and there's the controversy. Now, of course, we live in the modern Internet age. So, as soon as a scientist says, "I think that there's this syndrome—I want to call it PANDAS—and – sort of, you know, a psychiatric syndrome provoked by a bacterial infection", of course, there are now support groups, and there's groups on the Internet, and there's patient groups supporting this diagnosis before the science is even settled. And, then, of course, once that happens, when you try to do more science, or have any kind of discussion about whether or not this is a real syndrome, you have parents and patient groups and advocacy groups, you know, calling you all kinds of nasty names and saying there's a conspiracy against people with PANDAS, it's all the insurance companies and Big Pharma and evil doctors or whatever. So, that's the situation that we're in the middle of right now, unfortunately, is that, before the science is settled, you know, there's the scientific controversy, then there's the public controversy. This came to the media attention recently because of a 16-year-old girl called Elizabeth Wray. She developed, you know, a syndrome like PANDAS with ticks and psychological disorders, was diagnosed by a physician with PANDAS, and then was transferred to Boston's Children's Hospital for – presumably for further treatment of PANDAS. Now, the story that is going around the PANDAS community is that once she got to Boston University—or Boston Children's Hospital—she was told – the parents were told, "We don't believe that PANDAS is real – that it exists", and then they essentially admitted their daughter to the psychiatric unit and started treating her with psychiatric medications. Now, I don't know if that's true, because the doctors and the hospital are not telling their side of the story because of patient confidentiality. So, we don't know what their side of the story is. We only know the parents' side of the story, filtered through the PANDAS community. Unfortunately, now there's – this story has taken on a life of its own. There's a Free Elizabeth Wray movement going on within the PANDAS community, they're telling all kinds of horror stories about Boston Children's Hospital, and, you know, we can't verify any of it. What's interesting in reading about it is that each side has their narrative—and I wrote about this on Science-Based Medicine—because one of the things that – the ideas that we're wrestling with in the skeptical community is that—well, all right, we have, I think, a good approach to critical thinking, we understand a lot about self-deception, about the nature of science and pseudoscience—but we don't always have a good story to tell the public, or we have a hard time convincing mainstream outlets that we have – that our story is an interesting and good one. You know, we have to really market our narrative—the skeptical narrative. When you read about stories like this, the PANDAS proponents have a really compelling emotional narrative. It may be total B.S.—i don't know—but it's very compelling. They have a story of a child suffering from an unusual disease, parents who just want to do what's right for her—I believe all those things are correct—and then they are, essentially, being abused by a dismissive and skeptical medical establishment who doesn't believe in this disease, and that is treating their child with perhaps harmful, you know, psychiatric medications. They even – this went to court. Apparently, the hospital thought that the parents were being negligent in not allowing them to give proper standard of care—psychiatric treatment—to their child, and they wanted to have custody taken away from the parents, and they wanted to admit Elizabeth to a locked psychiatric ward—again, not sure – I can't verify those from the hospital's side of things. A judge – a Massachusetts judge essentially made her a ward of the state while they sorted out what was going on, but they did not grant the hospital their request to treat her in the way that they wanted to. So, they essentially just – the state took her out of everybody's hands for a moment – for the moment. So, it's interesting. Of course, the PANDAS community, again, is up in arms, you know. The court essentially took custody away from these parents that are only trying to do what's right for their daughter. But, of course, you could see the other narrative—you know, let's assume that the physicians think that—even if you think – whether or not you think PANDAS really exists—they think that she has a psychiatric illness, the parents are in denial, they're pursuing this false diagnosis, and they're, you know, refusing standard medical care. That's a story, too.

B: What if you just pulled out the whole strep association, and just treat it like a "pandisorder"? Is their beef that it's associated with strep, and they don't think there's any association? Why don't they just treat it like a neuropsychiatric disorder –

S: Yeah.

B: – and forget about the whole strep association?

S: Well, because the strep association would lead you to treat with things like antibiotics. So, that's the question: Should you treat it with antibiotics, or should you treat her like a psychiatric (''inaudible'') patient?

J: Why not both? I mean, why wouldn't you –

S: Well, she has had at least one round of antibiotics. You can also treat it like an autoimmune disease, with, like, intravenous globulin, for example. So, I mean, these are real medical questions. Do we treat it like an infection, do we treat it like a post-infectious auto-immune disease, or do we treat it like a psychiatric disorder? Those are real questions.

J: Steve, are you saying pandas don't exist? Let me just get this straight.

(''laughter'')

S: So, well, I did – to give a serious answer to your sarcastic question, I did –

R: My favorite kind.

S: – take the opportunity – I'm good that way. I'm good that way. I did take the opportunity just to familiarize myself with the PANDAS literature—again, I always emphasize, I'm no an expert in this, but I can read the literature and give my opinion like a science journalist—i think it's genuinely controversial. When I read the research, there's lots of – the ducks are not in a row. So, when you do things like treat kids who apparently have PANDAS with antibiotics in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, they don't necessarily improve. And, if you look for the antibodies that are supposed to be there, they don't necessarily correlate with the disease onset or with the existence of strep. So –

B: So, this is clearly not like autism and vaccines. It's just more complicated than that.

S: So, no. So, right. So, autism and vaccines, like, I would say, that's been studied enough to say that autism's – that autism is not caused by vaccines. We can say that. We can make the negative statement. I cannot make the negative statement that PANDAS does not exist, only that the research so far has not reached the threshold where we can agree that it does exist and that there is some actual negative data—there's some positive data, too—so it's legitimately controversial. It did remind me, though, of the chronic Lyme disease controversy—

R: Yeah.

S: —which is very common in New England—again, where they think that a number of symptoms, including neurological symptoms, can be caused by a bacterial infection and treated with antibiotics. And the same – there's a lot of overlap in those two communities, you know.

J: Steve, are you saying that the public has unrealistic expectations?

S: Well, I think – it's partly that. I mean, I think the public is uncomfortable with the uncertainty, and they like this sort of hero–villain narrative, so they paint the medical community as the villains, and—except for those maverick physicians who understand. They're Lyme-literate, or they understand PANDAS, so they're the heroes—and, then, the insurance companies don't want to pay for, you know, over-and-over recurrent courses of IV antibiotics, so they're the villains, you know. They're not—I'm not defending insurance companies, but sometimes they actually – sometimes they're right. They don't want to pay for things that are not science-based or evidence-based. So, it's complicated. And, you know, how do we – so, how do we deal with a child with this disorder when we don't know what the best scientific answer is—we don't know if it's autoimmune, infectious, or psychiatric? We just have to, you know, do the best we can—and there may be different physicians who would take different approaches—but to portray it as "PANDAS definitely exists. If you don't believe in it, you're dismissive and you're mean and evil, or you're protecting some kind of Big Pharma grant that you're getting"—they always bring that up—rather than saying, "You know, we really want to know the right answer, but we just haven't found it yet. It's still – it's legitimately controversial."

J: Yeah, I think what you're saying does confirm what I was thinking, is that the public wants an answer, science is not yet done figuring this one out, and –

S: Yeah. Like the earthquake one, right?

J: Yeah.

S: Sometimes the answer is, "We don't know yet", you know. "We need to do more research". In medicine, we have to make decisions with imperfect, you know, information, so, you know.

J: Wouldn't it be typical, too – like, let's say that this is happening over and over again –

S: Yeah.

J: – like, at some point, some doctors are going to come up with different ideas, they're going to try it out, you know. The trial-and-error process happens, and—i hate to say it, but—this girl is probably going to be one of the people that gets tested on with new ideas.

S: Well, I mean – well, if you're really testing then you should be doing a research protocol. If you're just applying the best knowledge that we have to an individual patient, that's – a certain amount of trial and error with that that's not really experimentation. So, there is a difference there. So, I don't know. The other interesting question that I'm kind of alluding to is, what role do the patient or the advocacy groups play? I think, a lot of times, that they are helpful in raising awareness for a disease or a disorder and raising funding, and advocating for patients. You know, I've seen, I think, there's a lot of very effective, very good patient advocacy groups out there. But, sometimes, they put their nickel down on a specific scientific answer, and that's not their job.

J: Yeah.

S: It's not their job to predict or demand that science give them the answer they want. And, you know, unfortunately, some people want the answer to be "an infection"—not "genes", not, you know, "We don't know".

J: Yeah. It's curable. That's the one they want.

S: Of course, who – that's the answer I would want to have! "It's something outside that is, you know, foreign, that can be cured, and that can reverse my child to the way that they were". Who – every parent wants that to be the answer, but sometimes you – you know, you have to step back from what you want and listen to the evidence. That's the – that's the scientist's, that's the physician's job, you know. You should just let them do their job, you know.

J: All right, so, I want to bring up a quick side point on this.

S: Yeah.

J: So, as an example, let's say, fifty years ago, let's say this was happening. What stance do you think the public would have differently than what we're seeing today?

S: It's the same, and this ''did'' happen fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, you know, she would be diagnosed with neurosyphilis—maybe not somebody who was sixteen, but that was the stand-in for what we now would, you know, the same subculture would diagnose with chronic Lyme. There were believers in that. There were physicians who believed in treatments like chelation therapy, you know, and science proved it wrong, and they said, "Well, we don't care, we're going to still do it. We're going to come up with – We're just going to keep coming up with special pleading and alternate theories, and form our own societies and our own – and just keep doing it, and say that it's all a conspiracy."

J: Mm-hmm.

S: So, but, I think that it's just the turnaround time is so much faster because of the Internet. Like, another example: CCSVI, right? The alleged blockage in the veins that drained blood from the brain, causing multiple sclerosis. It's that – that whole process—of Dr. Zamboni proposing this entity and a treatment, to it being researched, to it being refuted, to, you know, patient advocacy groups springing up and calling for conspiracies and calling for research and demanding that science give them the answer that they want—all has taken place within a few years. We've seen that cycle happen right before our eyes. So, the Internet is just making it happen a lot quicker and a lot bigger, I think. But it's always been this way.

J: So do you have any ideas on what we could do? Could the skeptical community do anything to help this (''inaudible'')?

S: Well, I think what we do is, we discuss the issue from a science, logical, critical thinking point of view, you know. We point out the role of science in this, and we, I think, we try to bring the public discourse to a level that can deal with it in a more productive way, rather than the conspiracy mongering, sort of lowest-common-denominator that it would otherwise sink to.

J: Yeah.

=== Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44)===
* pnd

{{transcribing
|transcriber = Cornelioid
}}

S: Well, let's move on. Jay, we're talking about how the media presents stories about paranormal activities.

J: Yeah, this is interesting. So, a professor decided to – Professor Brewer decided that—because what we're seeing over the years is a very obvious interest, in the general public, to news articles, and to TV shows, that talk about ghosts; and, you know, we've all seen the ''Ghost Hunter'' TV show, and, to people like us, at best, we watch it, and it's fun, right? 'Cause it's ridiculous and entertaining, and we like to see people from our perspective—a skeptical perspective—they're acting foolishly. But, there are a lot of people that are watching this, and they're riveted. Like, they really love it and they think a lot of it's real—and, i'm sure, to a certain degree, i can't say everyone that watches it and thinks everything about it is real—but, in the end, there's a huge entertainment factor there, and, unfortunately, to us skeptics, we feel like there's a lot of people that simply believe it, and that's their favorite entertainment. And i know a lot of people—I'm friends with a lot of people—that literally have active discussions on Facebook all the time, that i dip into, that are talking about the latest TAPS show. We'll be, "Can you believe it?" and "I knew that place was haunted!", and they're like, you know, getting whooped up.

S: I don't get it. I just don't get it. Nothing happens!

J: Yeah.

(''laughter'')

R: That's not true! That's not true.

E:

S: But they never find a ghost.

R: Steve, Steve. Did you feel that?

(''laughter'')

R: That happens! That happens all the time.

(''applause'')

R: They feel so much.

J: The thing is, you know –

S: I want to see a full, floating torso drift across the camera lens. Then i'll be impressed.

B: I still won't believe it.

S: No, but at least it'll be entertaining.

J: A lot of the shows, though, they're all right on the cusp, you know?

== Live Q&A (51:06) ==
* Questions from the CSICon audience

== Science or Fiction (55:19) ==

S: Item number one. A new study finds that astronauts who spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. Item number two. Scientists have discovered the first feathered dinosaur in the western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers. And item number three. Researchers find that, at the molecular level, evolutionary changes can be highly predictable.

== Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:08:11) ==
<blockquote>Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.</blockquote>
J: Paul Kurtz!

{{Outro1}}

== References ==
<references/>

{{Navigation}}

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-07T12:33:49Z

Cornelioid: /* This Day in Skepticism (1:28) */ full segment

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|episodeTitle = SGU Episode 381
|episodeDate = 3rd November 2012 
|episodeIcon = File:KurtzPic2.jpg 
|previous = 
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|notesLink = http://www.theskepticsguide.org/archive/podcastinfo.aspx?mid=1&pid=381
|forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,43845.0.html
|qowText = Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality. 
|qowAuthor = [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] 
|}}

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

?: – a live edition of my favorite podcast and radio show. So, we're going to have Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Jay Novella, Even Berenstein, and – and a woman –

(''laughter'')

?: – join us. It's the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe!

(''applause'')

S: Hello, and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

(''applause'')

S: Today is Thursday, October 25th, 2012, and we are live from [http://www.csiconference.org/ CSICon 2012].

(''applause'')

Joining me, as always, are Bob Novella –

B: Hey everybody!

(''cheers'')

S: – Rebecca Watson –

R: Hello, everyone!

(''cheers'')

''audience member'': I love you, Rebecca!

R: I love you, too!

S: – Jay Novella...Jay Novella –

J: Wooooo! Rebecca, yeah!

(''cheers'')

R: I love you, Jay!

S: – and Evan Berenstein.

E: Hello, Nashville!

(''cheers'')

S: So, how're you guys doing? How do you like Nashville?

J: It's awesome. I didn't – I thought people were going to literally be playing guitar when I got off the airplane.

B: Oh, come on, Jay.

S: Yeah, in the airport, you know?

J: Yeah.

== This Day in Skepticism (1:28) ==
November 3, 1957 Sputnik 2 launched

S: So, Rebecca, you always start us off with a This Day in Science and Skepticism. This show will be going up on November 3rd, so, did anything happen that day?

R: Nope.

(''laughter'')

B: Ever?

R: Oh, all right. One thing happened. One thing happened! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_2 Sputnik 2] happened.

S: ''Sputnik 2: The Revenge''.

(''laughter'')

R: ''Son of Sputnik''.

S: ''Son of Sputnik''.

J: ''Son of Sputnik''!

R: That's right. Sputnik 2 you might know as "the one that killed the puppy".

(''awwws'')

R: No? Aww, that's weird, 'cause I really thought that this would go over well at a live event! Yeah, Sputnik 2 is the craft that took Laika into orbit, Laika being the Soviet space dog who became the first animal in orbit—for about, like, 10 minutes, before she died.

E: Well, you know –

S: A couple of hours. It was a couple of hours. They thought he was going to survive for about ten days –

R: I think she's a "she".

S: – ''she'' was going to survive –

E: Eh.

R: Get it right, Steve!

S: You know, asexual Russian names, I mean, come on. But, they thought that Laika was going to survive for about ten days, but then they had a little mishap with the cooling system, and –

E: Oops.

S: Yeah. – got a little hot in the capsule—104 degrees, they said in (''inaudible'')

E: That'd be a hot dog. Yep.

(''groans'')

B: Oh, come on. My god.

E: Thank you. I'll be here all the weekend.

R: How – can we just take a moment, just to take a poll of the audience: How are our dead dog jokes doing? Good?

J: Yes!

(''applause'')

R: OK. All right. Yeah.

J: You know what? I didn't know until we researched this item that it was a one-way mission.

R: Yeah.

E: Mm-hmm.

J: That's really nasty.

S: Well, the capsule returned.

(''laughter'')

E: Yeah, well –

S: About 162 days later, it burned up in the atmosphere. But, yeah, they never intended to bring Laika back.

J: No, they actually were going to euthanize her with poison food after the tenth day, I think, right?

R: This is seriously the worst item ever. What was I thinking when I picked it?

S: There – there's Laika.

E: Aww. Aww.

R: Oh yeah! I didn't pick it! Steve forced me to!

E: But, we'd never know who this dog was if it didn't go on Sputnik 2, right? I mean, this would be an otherwise – another animal.

R: No, yeah, and I'm sure Laika appreciates the fame she gets from ''beyond the grave''.

E: She got her fifteen minutes.

== In Memorium ==
=== Paul Kurtz (3:45) ===
* 1925-2012

S: Well, we are going to start the new segment of the show with an ''in memoriam''. We do like to, on the ''Skeptic's Guide'', pause to remember those members of the skeptical community who have passed, and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] died several days ago, just the day before the organizers were coming down to the conference. He died on Sunday. He was 85 years old. It was 1925 to 2012, so that is 86. I can do math. (''audience laughter'') You'll know why i was confused in a moment.

R: 'Cause you're terrible at math?

S: Yes. So, before we get the show started, Ron Lindsay and Kendrick Frazier talked about Paul Kurtz. You know, he was one of the giants of the skeptical movement, of the skeptical community. You know, he was largely responsible for organizing the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, founding Prometheus Books, CFI, [http://www.secularhumanism.org/ Secular Humanism]. He was an academic, a philosopher. He really gave a lot of weight to the movement early on. He made it to that – he broke it to that next level. It wasn't that, you know, before he came on board. So he has to be remembered for that. We did have some interactions with Paul along the years. The first year that we started – (''audience cooing'')

R: Baby Steve!

E: Aww.

S: I was a little younger back then.

R: He's three years old there.

B: He's only half-grey there.

S: (''laughing'') I'm only half-grey!

E: A little less grey, yep.

S: You can mark my age by my greyness up until about ten years ago, when i went totally grey. Right when we got started, in 1996, you know, CSICOP, now CSI, you know, they were the big national skeptical organization. They'd definitely – They took us under their wing, you know, gave us their support, their local membership list, so that we could get our movement going. And i remember meeting Paul at the first World Skeptics Conference, and he was immediately—like, you know, your grandfather—like, you know, very, very comfortably took on that air of being a mentor. It's like, "Yeah, this is great. You're welcome to the skeptical movement." So i definitely remember him fondly in that way. A few years later, Paul organized a meeting of the local skeptical groups. In the picture here you can see me again with Bob, Perry, and Evan. The four of us came up together –

J: Now, if i remember correctly, Rebecca, you and i were off being badass somewhere else, right?

R: I think that's what was happening, yeah.

S: – and, i think, in the foreground, that's Colonel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Nickell Joe Nickell], isn't it?

E: Colonel.

S: Yeah, he had broke his leg in Spain, or something?

R: Round of applause for Colonel Joe Nickell!

E: I remember that.

(''applause'')

S: Joe actually is going to come up, and he's going to read a poem that he wrote, i believe, about Paul.

JN: Paul was a great supporter of the arts, and i hope he would have liked this. The poem is called "Book of Seasons: An elegy". (''Uncertain re: permission to reproduce poem'')

S: Thank you, Joe.

=== Leon Jaroff (7:34) ===
* 1926-2012

S: This same weekend, Saturday before the show, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_(magazine) Leon Jaroff] also died. ''He'' was 85, hence my confusion. So, Leon Jariff—not a big name in the skeptical community recently, and if you ask, you know, people at conventions like this if they knew who he was – I mean, in fact, right before the show Rebecca said to me, "Who's Leon Jaroff?"

R: (''indignant gasp'')

S: Sorry, Rebecca.

(''audience laughter'')

S: But he was perhaps one of the most skeptical journalists that we have had.

B: Yeah.

S: He was the science columnist for ''Time Magazine''. It was he who said, "You know, popularizing science is important, you know, we should start a science-dedicated magazine." And that was ''Discover Magazine''. That was him. He was not afraid to be a hard-nosed skeptic when writing about scientific issues. So, for example, when writing about chiropractors, [http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,213482,00.html he wrote],

<blockquote>
Chiropractors also employ a bewildering variety of weird practices to diagnose their patients. Some use applied kinesiology, a muscle test that supposedly can diagnose allergies and diseased organs. Hair analysis and iris readings are commonplace in the profession. Even sillier are many of the treatments that chiropractors use and recommend: homeopathic potions, colon irrigation, magnetic therapy, enzyme pills, colored-light therapy, and something called "balancing body energy," among other mystical procedures with undocumented effects.
</blockquote>

S: That's from a mainstream journalist writing in ''Time Magazine''. Do we see this kind of thing today? I don't think so.

B: Nope.

(''audience applause'')

S: So, you know, we do have to, I think, also note the support that Jaroff gave to such a good science journalism, and that kind of hard-nosed, skeptical science journalism is definitely something we miss. That's a void that, I think, that we in the skeptical community have to fill, but, unfortunately, it is a void.

== News Items ==
=== Big Bang Conference at CERN (9:31)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19870036 Big Bang and religion mixed in Cern debate]

S: Rebecca –

R: Yes!

S: – this is a different quote. It's not as good a quote.

<blockquote>
Science in isolation is great for producing stuff, but not so good for producing ideas.
</blockquote>

R: Mm-hmm.

S: Who said that?

R: That was said by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Pinsent Andrew Pinsent] at the Ramsey Center for Science and Religion. What I particularly liked about this quote is that it is completely reversed – it is the exact opposite of what I would have suggested.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I would say that science is actually really good at ideas, but, in order to produce stuff, you have to add something else. You know, like, they might be able to figure out lasers, but to make a CD player you need a marketing executive.

S: Or death ray.

R: Thank you. Yeah, of course. Why didn't I go there first?

(''laughter'')

R: Yeah, so, this quote comes from a recent article that the BBC produced: "Big Bang and religion mixed in CERN debates". Apparently, there was a conference recently that CERN held—you remember CERN, you know, the guys who, apparently, may have found –

J: Higgs!

R: – the Higgs boson.

S: A boson with Higgs-like properties.

R: A Higgs-like thing.

S: Boson, yeah.

R: A Higgish. I like "Higgish" –

B: "Higgish"?

R: – a little bit.

J: (''laughing'') "A little bit!"

S: "Higgy"?

B: (''singing, inaudible'') ''Higgy again."

R: So, yes. Apparently, I don't know the purpose – I don't know what, who dreamt this up, but what I'm thinking is that someone was concerned that they may have found a particle that many people know as the "God particle", and, so, they're concerned that they're going to be excommunicated or, you know, that people will rebel—religious people will rebel—against science. Basically, we'll have some sort of Dark Ages–esque thing happening, and, so, maybe somebody at CERN thought, "Well, we should have this conference where we talk about how religious people should be OK with the Higgs boson."

B: Mm-hmm.

R: So, those are the good intentions that I'm assuming are behind this conference that has speakers such as this. The quotes in here are pretty fun, and none of them have any amount of intelligence to them. Steve, you're the one who brought this one to my attention here –

S: Yes.

R: I'm interested in what – we've talked a little bit before about things like the Templeton Foundation, which is an organization that gives out a prize – gives out prizes to people who can explore science in a religious context, basically. And I'm a bit opposed to it. I feel like it's muddying the waters. I think we don't ''need'' to bring religion into what people are doing at CERN.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I think those two things are happily separated, but I'm interested in knowing your feelings on this.

S: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think trying to introduce theology into science is misguided. You know, this conference was specifically about the origin of the universe. So, it's not just about scientific issues in particular. I think the thinking, at least on the part of the theologians who were quoted about this conference, is that, well, you're talking about the origin of the universe. That's a really big question, and religion is about answering the really big questions—not science. Science is narrow and reductionist, and makes stuff, but can't really grapple with the big questions of our origins. And that's exactly incorrect, as you were saying. That's a complete knock to science. I mean, science is, in fact, the only human intellectual endeavor that ''can'' answer any empirical question about the origin of the universe.

R: Yeah.

J: So, was the conference, though, the scientists trying to appease religious people? The saying that –

R: Well, you know, apparently, this was – the conference was done on the part of CERN, according to BBC, and that's what I find troubling. I'm totally OK with a conference that religious people host, you know, and the topic might be "How do we –" you know, "How do we consider our theology now that we know ''X'', ''Y'', and ''Z''—now that science has discovered this? What does that mean for ''our'' belief system?" And I think that's fine, but, you know, apparently, the theologians who were there seem to think that this was a chance to ''debate'' the scientists –

J: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

R: – and, no! Why would you do that? Debate is completely the opposite direction of where you want to go.

S: It also – I mean, the quotes seem to me like a desperate grasp at relevance, trying to make it seem like they're – you know, that theology is still relevant to questions about origins of the universe, when, in fact, science has completely displaced it from that endeavor.

J: So, did it end up with, like, a fistfight? Like, what happened?

(''laughter'')

E: Science won.

R: I haven't found any evidence of any arrests, so, apparently –

S: There were no fisticuffs?

J: That really must've been awkward as hell, though, right? Like, they're like, sitting there, like, after a whole day, and they're like, "Uh, OK, it's over now."

E: Something tells me they're not going to be doing this again. They're going to learn from this.

S: I don't know.

R: Well, I mean, it's actually not even – like, I wish it had been that exciting. But, instead, it just seems like it was really ''boring'' –

E: Yeah.

R: – and nobody came to ''any'' conclusions. Because you ''can't'', you know?

S: Yeah.

R: You're just having a discussion of, like, well, you know, "But what don't we know?"

=== Italian Earthquake Scientists Convicted (14:57)===
* [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/22/us-italy-earthquake-court-idUSBRE89L13V20121022 Italian scientists convicted over earthquake warning]

S: Now, we're trying to keep – we like to keep our live shows really light –

(''laughter'')

E: So far, so good.

S: So, we thought we'd talk about a horrible earthquake that killed over three hundred people.

E: Yeah, let's go there.

R: Good intro. Good intro there.

S: But there's actually a better story embedded in that. There were six Italian scientists, who were recently convicted of manslaughter –

B: Yeah.

S: – for failure to properly communicate the warnings about the upcoming L'Aquila earthquake in 2009. Yeah, we've been following this story, you know, since it happened. The quick version is that there were a number of small tremors in this very earthquake-prone part of Italy, and the geologists—the local geologists—you know, were following it. And their opinion was that, well, these tremors are very common. Most such tremors are not followed by major quakes. Most major quakes are not preceded by these kinds of tremors. So, the probability of a major quake occurring is not particularly higher, you know, now, just because of these tremors, than at any time, and, therefore, there's no cause for alarm. Now, they were specifically asked during a press conference, "Should we panic?" You know, "Should we evacuate?" And they said "No. There's no reason to evacuate. Stay at home and drink a glass of wine."

B: Steve, was this about a year ago that we covered this?

S: 2009. 2009 –

B: Oh, wow. (''inaudible'')

S: – so, was the quake, and then the court trial started about a year ago, and now the decision came down that the six scientists were convicted to six years – I think six years in prison and something like, you know, millions of dollars in damages for manslaughter—for the deaths of the people who didn't evacuate because they – of their reassurances that there was nothing to be worried about.

R: That's horrific.

J: Well, i, you know, to play devil's advocate real quick, if there was true negligence—like, if they didn't follow through with things that they needed to do, if they did a terrible job at analyzing the data, in a fashion that – where the data could have been analyzed better, or they actually weren't asking their peers for the information—i can understand if there was extreme negligence.

S: Right.

J: But, even still, like, that's very hard to prove, and I just don't understand –

S: Well, I mean, not really. The question is, was their opinion within the standard for their profession? That's—in my opinion—that's the only real question here. You can't be blamed for being wrong, right? You can't be blamed for a bad outcome if you were following the standard. Now, of course, scientists can't predict earthquakes. You can't predict when an earthquake is going to occur. That's the bottom line. What – every statement they said was truthful, you know, every factual statement. "These tremors do not necessarily mean that there's an earthquake coming, and they are not a reason to evacuate. We don't evacuate every city where there's tremors because there might be a major quake, because it's not that predictive." So, that was not negligent. No, and they weren't really being accused of negligence. They were basically being accused of poorly communicating to the public. It seems to be based on a lot of false premises about what scientists ''can know''—what an expert about, you know, an earthquake, a geologist, expert ''can know''.

R: Yeah, they've been convicted for not using a magical power they don't have.

S: Yeah.

R: They might as well have convicted all the psychics in Italy for not accurately predicting this earthquake.

J: I think we need to be careful—i don't disagree, of course. I don't think that these men should be going to jail for this at all—but it is an important thing to state that, I think, people should go to prison, or get in trouble ''legally'', if they are misrepresenting science or – right? So you see where I'm going with this.

S: Well, yeah. If you are –

J: If you're setting that premise—you're saying, "Hey, these guys screwed up, they didn't do what they were supposed to do, they didn't communicate to us the real possible outcomes here", whatever—and, like –

S: Yeah.

J: – I'll reiterate, I don't think that they should be going to jail—

B: Well, I don't agree –

J: —but, I do think, though, that that standard that that court set needs to be applied all the way down the ladder.

B: Yeah, but, Jay, like, someone saying that "I have a cure for cancer and it's scientifically proven" but it's a sham?

J: Exactly, right? So, if they're going to actually take those scientists out and say "You're done. You're not performing science anymore and you're going to jail for that bad decision or information you gave", well, hello! Then, you know, all of a sudden, a million lawsuits need to be filed.

S: But, it wasn't – to clarify, though, it wasn't ''bad'', it was just ''unlucky''. I mean, doctors encounter this all the time, you know. You are asked to decide, you know, what tests to order, what diagnoses a patient might have. There's a whole lot of liability involved with that. You can't be convicted of malpractice just because of a bad outcome if what you did was within the standard of care.

B: Right.

S: So, was the information they were giving to the public within the standard for the profession? If the answer is "yes", the fact that there was a low-probability earthquake the next week is not their fault.

E: Right.

S: It doesn't change the fact – you know, if they're saying there's a 99% chance that there's not going to be an earthquake, and then the 1% thing happens, they were still right –

J: Yeah.

S: – in saying that it was unlikely.

R: Yeah.

E: Didn't the evidence show, basically, that they performed correctly, essentially? They did not –

S: That's the consensus. I mean, so, there's worldwide outrage, especially among the scientific community (''inaudible'') –

B: This has got to be shot down in a higher court.

S: Yeah.

B: This can't – can't possibly stand.

E: I hope so.

S: Well, there's two appeals left. There's two appeals, and they will stay out of prison before those appeals. So, the United States National Academy of Science, the Royal Academy of Science—the Royal Society, rather—issued a joint statement saying that "that is why we must protest the verdict in Italy. If it becomes a precedent in law, it could lead to a situation in which scientists will be afraid to give expert opinion."

J: Yeah, that's devastating.

E: Mm-hmm.

S: So, it would have a chilling effect. What – you know, what geologist is going to, you know, talk to the public in Italy now, if you could wind up in jail and, you know, financially devastated, and your career devastated, because you can't predict the future, you know, because you don't have a crystal ball? It's insane. It's insane.

J: Yeah. To think that they're going after these scientists, and they're not going after the rampant quackery throughout –

S: Well, there's that, too.

E: I wonder how much pressure they came under from, like, the families, the survivors, of this terrible, terrible devastation –

J: Oh yeah, they had to hang someone.

E: – and I imagine they put a lot of pressure on politicians and other people in order to hold ''somebody'' accountable.

J: They have to. They had to send someone down the river for that.

B: Did they have a trial?

S: Yeah.

B: Did they have witnesses and experts coming in?

S: Yeah. Yep.

B: I'd love to know the details of what exactly happened, because how could –

(''laughter'')

S: So, we'll see if the worldwide backlash has an effect. I mean, again, they do have two appeals left, so we'll definitely follow it.

=== Whale Makes Human Sounds (21:35)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20026938 Beluga whale 'makes human-like sounds']

S: All right, Rebecca, so, we have a cute animal –

R: Thank you.

S: – we're going to talk about now.

J: This is a happy one!

R: Just tell me this narwhal or whatever is alive.

S: It's a whale.

E: It's alive and well.

S: It's a beluga whale.

B: It sort of looks like a narwhal.

R: Tell me this beluga is alive!

E: That's NOC the beluga. They're very much alive.

R: It's not a beluga?

E: "NOC". N-O-C.

S: "NOC". NOC the beluga.

R: Oh! "That's NOC."

(''laughter'')

R: I was about to say, "No, ''that is a beluga''."

S: Sounds like a children's song.

E: It does sound like a children's –

S: Evan, sing it.

E: No.

S: OK.

J: Don't change it! Please don't –

E: If my daughter was here, maybe. But, no. So, what's important about NOC the beluga? Well, OK, so, picture this: You are part of the National Marine Mammal Foundation, OK, and you're in the tank, swimming around with the whales and stuff, and, all of a sudden, you hear somebody—you hear a voice—call your name. Something to the effect that – "Get out of the water! Get out of the water!" So, you're in the tank and you come up and you say, "OK, who told me to get out of the water? Who told me to get out of the water?" And the other scientists and people are looking around you like, "Nobody? What the heck are you talking about?" And, he's like, "Well, I definitely ''heard'' that!" Well, what did he actually hear? Well, apparently, NOC the beluga made some noises very reminiscent of human noises. Beluga whales are, you know, incredible creatures. Their calls – They're known as the canaries of the sea. They have a very high-frequency, high-pitched tone to their noises that they make, but they make lots of different kinds of noises. They can emit up to eleven different kinds of sounds—crackles, whistles, trills, squawks—all sorts of things. But, it's been rumored that these whales can emit noises that sound like humans talking. And, for the first time, they've actually recorded NOC the whale making these noises, and they have it on tape. And we have it on tape.

R: Nah.

(''NOC makes unnervingly human-sounding noises'')

R: Did he maybe just swallow a kazoo?

(''laughter'')

J: Everybody has a drunk neighbor that makes those noises.

(''laughter'')

E: Oh, gosh. Who knows what the heck he was saying? You know, dolphins have been taught to mimic noises that kind of sound like human voices, but, before this, there's been no record of an animal ''spontaneously'' coming up and making these kinds of noises. This is the first evidence, the first hard evidence we have of it.

R: Here's – I have a theory. I have a theory. I have a theory that – so, whales, in general, are incredibly intelligent –

E: Oh yeah.

R: – possibly as smart as us, but they don't want thumbs, or any way to talk to us –

E: Or fire.

R: – and I feel like they do, basically – That's true. No, I saw Spongebob once. There was fire under the sea. I think it can be done.

S: Yep, but they don't have nanotechnology, though.

R: They don't. So, my theory is that whales are basically, like – they have – it's like they have locked-in syndrome, you know? Where they're just –

J: Oh, no.

R: – super-intelligent, and there's all these people around them, and they're just messing with them –

J: So, he was screaming, actually –

R: Yeah! And, so, he's been like, his whole life, he's been in this stupid little – like, he's in captivity, right? So, he's been in this stupid little aquarium, and he's just, like, "I hate all of you! And I'm going to will myself to tell you, because you're too stupid to understand!"

E: So, basically, what's going on here is, the whale has learned to change – rapidly change pressure within its naval cavity in order to create these sounds. And, it hasn't – the whale is able to over-inflate what's known as its vestibular sac in its blowhole, which is normally acts to stop water from basically coming in. So, the whale is going through a lot of, you know, effort, essentially, to try to make these noises. And I'm sure they're going to be trying to figure out exactly, you know, basically, ''why'' is the whale doing this?

S: Well, he just – this whale was – did spend his life in captivity –

E: Yeah.

S: – so, he did hear human speech a lot, and maybe he's just, to some extent, mimicking the sounds that he grew up hearing his whole life.

J: It's definitely – it definitely has a human sound to it, in the cadence and everything.

S: Yeah.

J: I mean, he's intelligent enough to mimic a human, which is really cool.

R: Yeah.

J: And, then, you always think, you know, if he can mimic a human—if his brain is advanced that much—you know, maybe he –

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But, is he mimicking humans or making fun of humans? You know, like people make fun of other languages?

R: Yeah, he's just like "Weh! Weh! Weh! This is what you sound like!"

E: Yeah. You stupid bald monkey and (''inaudible'')! Get out of here!

B: Sounds like a false dichotomy.

=== PANDAS Controversy (26:18)===
* [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/a-pandas-story/ A PANDAS Story]

S: So, we're going to talk about – going from talking about beluga whales to talking about PANDAS! Except, we're not talking about pandas, because we're talking about –

E: Wait.

R: Stop toying with my emotions, Steve!

S: I had to put a cute picture of a panda up there for you, Rebecca. We are talking about pediatric autoimmune –

R: It makes sense.

S: – neuropsychiatric disorder associated with –

E: I didn't know PANDA was an acronym. Cool!

R: Steve, I miss the panda.

S: – streptococcal infection—or, PANDAS. See? There's a panda.

(''laughter, cooing'')

E: Aww!

R: Yay.

S: We're talking about PANDAS –

E: Aww.

R: Boo.

J: Oh.

E: That's worse.

S: – which is a legitimately controversial medical diagnosis! So, essentially, what happens is, children suddenly develop ticks—like Tourette syndrome—and psychiatric disorders—obsessive–compulsive disorder—and it is thought that, in some cases, that it is actually – the inciting event is an infection—bacteria—streptococcal infection. Now, of course, it's always difficult to establish the reality of a new disease. Unless you get all your ducks in a row, and all the, you know, pathology all adds up, it's sometimes difficult to identify a legitimate new syndrome and to prove that – cause and effect. So, correlation is one thing. As we know, correlation is not ''necessarily'' causation. And, so, the syndrome exists. There are – the number of physicians who have identified the sudden onset psychiatric – neuropsychiatric disorder, and in some cases it is temporally associated with a streptococcal infection. But that's not the same thing as saying that the strep infection ''caused'' the neuropsychiatric syndrome. So, that's – and there's the controversy. Now, of course, we live in the modern Internet age. So, as soon as a scientist says, "I think that there's this syndrome—I want to call it PANDAS—and – sort of, you know, a psychiatric syndrome provoked by a bacterial infection", of course, there are now support groups, and there's groups on the Internet, and there's patient groups supporting this diagnosis before the science is even settled. And, then, of course, once that happens, when you try to do more science, or have any kind of discussion about whether or not this is a real syndrome, you have parents and patient groups and advocacy groups, you know, calling you all kinds of nasty names and saying there's a conspiracy against people with PANDAS, it's all the insurance companies and Big Pharma and evil doctors or whatever. So, that's the situation that we're in the middle of right now, unfortunately, is that, before the science is settled, you know, there's the scientific controversy, then there's the public controversy. This came to the media attention recently because of a 16-year-old girl called Elizabeth Wray. She developed, you know, a syndrome like PANDAS with ticks and psychological disorders, was diagnosed by a physician with PANDAS, and then was transferred to Boston's Children's Hospital for – presumably for further treatment of PANDAS. Now, the story that is going around the PANDAS community is that once she got to Boston University—or Boston Children's Hospital—she was told – the parents were told, "We don't believe that PANDAS is real – that it exists", and then they essentially admitted their daughter to the psychiatric unit and started treating her with psychiatric medications. Now, I don't know if that's true, because the doctors and the hospital are not telling their side of the story because of patient confidentiality. So, we don't know what their side of the story is. We only know the parents' side of the story, filtered through the PANDAS community. Unfortunately, now there's – this story has taken on a life of its own. There's a Free Elizabeth Wray movement going on within the PANDAS community, they're telling all kinds of horror stories about Boston Children's Hospital, and, you know, we can't verify any of it. What's interesting in reading about it is that each side has their narrative—and I wrote about this on Science-Based Medicine—because one of the things that – the ideas that we're wrestling with in the skeptical community is that—well, all right, we have, I think, a good approach to critical thinking, we understand a lot about self-deception, about the nature of science and pseudoscience—but we don't always have a good story to tell the public, or we have a hard time convincing mainstream outlets that we have – that our story is an interesting and good one. You know, we have to really market our narrative—the skeptical narrative. When you read about stories like this, the PANDAS proponents have a really compelling emotional narrative. It may be total B.S.—i don't know—but it's very compelling. They have a story of a child suffering from an unusual disease, parents who just want to do what's right for her—I believe all those things are correct—and then they are, essentially, being abused by a dismissive and skeptical medical establishment who doesn't believe in this disease, and that is treating their child with perhaps harmful, you know, psychiatric medications. They even – this went to court. Apparently, the hospital thought that the parents were being negligent in not allowing them to give proper standard of care—psychiatric treatment—to their child, and they wanted to have custody taken away from the parents, and they wanted to admit Elizabeth to a locked psychiatric ward—again, not sure – I can't verify those from the hospital's side of things. A judge – a Massachusetts judge essentially made her a ward of the state while they sorted out what was going on, but they did not grant the hospital their request to treat her in the way that they wanted to. So, they essentially just – the state took her out of everybody's hands for a moment – for the moment. So, it's interesting. Of course, the PANDAS community, again, is up in arms, you know. The court essentially took custody away from these parents that are only trying to do what's right for their daughter. But, of course, you could see the other narrative—you know, let's assume that the physicians think that—even if you think – whether or not you think PANDAS really exists—they think that she has a psychiatric illness, the parents are in denial, they're pursuing this false diagnosis, and they're, you know, refusing standard medical care. That's a story, too.

B: What if you just pulled out the whole strep association, and just treat it like a "pandisorder"? Is their beef that it's associated with strep, and they don't think there's any association? Why don't they just treat it like a neuropsychiatric disorder –

S: Yeah.

B: – and forget about the whole strep association?

S: Well, because the strep association would lead you to treat with things like antibiotics. So, that's the question: Should you treat it with antibiotics, or should you treat her like a psychiatric (''inaudible'') patient?

J: Why not both? I mean, why wouldn't you –

S: Well, she has had at least one round of antibiotics. You can also treat it like an autoimmune disease, with, like, intravenous globulin, for example. So, I mean, these are real medical questions. Do we treat it like an infection, do we treat it like a post-infectious auto-immune disease, or do we treat it like a psychiatric disorder? Those are real questions.

J: Steve, are you saying pandas don't exist? Let me just get this straight.

(''laughter'')

S: So, well, I did – to give a serious answer to your sarcastic question, I did –

R: My favorite kind.

S: – take the opportunity – I'm good that way. I'm good that way. I did take the opportunity just to familiarize myself with the PANDAS literature—again, I always emphasize, I'm no an expert in this, but I can read the literature and give my opinion like a science journalist—i think it's genuinely controversial. When I read the research, there's lots of – the ducks are not in a row. So, when you do things like treat kids who apparently have PANDAS with antibiotics in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, they don't necessarily improve. And, if you look for the antibodies that are supposed to be there, they don't necessarily correlate with the disease onset or with the existence of strep. So –

B: So, this is clearly not like autism and vaccines. It's just more complicated than that.

S: So, no. So, right. So, autism and vaccines, like, I would say, that's been studied enough to say that autism's – that autism is not caused by vaccines. We can say that. We can make the negative statement. I cannot make the negative statement that PANDAS does not exist, only that the research so far has not reached the threshold where we can agree that it does exist and that there is some actual negative data—there's some positive data, too—so it's legitimately controversial. It did remind me, though, of the chronic Lyme disease controversy—

R: Yeah.

S: —which is very common in New England—again, where they think that a number of symptoms, including neurological symptoms, can be caused by a bacterial infection and treated with antibiotics. And the same – there's a lot of overlap in those two communities, you know.

J: Steve, are you saying that the public has unrealistic expectations?

S: Well, I think – it's partly that. I mean, I think the public is uncomfortable with the uncertainty, and they like this sort of hero–villain narrative, so they paint the medical community as the villains, and—except for those maverick physicians who understand. They're Lyme-literate, or they understand PANDAS, so they're the heroes—and, then, the insurance companies don't want to pay for, you know, over-and-over recurrent courses of IV antibiotics, so they're the villains, you know. They're not—I'm not defending insurance companies, but sometimes they actually – sometimes they're right. They don't want to pay for things that are not science-based or evidence-based. So, it's complicated. And, you know, how do we – so, how do we deal with a child with this disorder when we don't know what the best scientific answer is—we don't know if it's autoimmune, infectious, or psychiatric? We just have to, you know, do the best we can—and there may be different physicians who would take different approaches—but to portray it as "PANDAS definitely exists. If you don't believe in it, you're dismissive and you're mean and evil, or you're protecting some kind of Big Pharma grant that you're getting"—they always bring that up—rather than saying, "You know, we really want to know the right answer, but we just haven't found it yet. It's still – it's legitimately controversial."

J: Yeah, I think what you're saying does confirm what I was thinking, is that the public wants an answer, science is not yet done figuring this one out, and –

S: Yeah. Like the earthquake one, right?

J: Yeah.

S: Sometimes the answer is, "We don't know yet", you know. "We need to do more research". In medicine, we have to make decisions with imperfect, you know, information, so, you know.

J: Wouldn't it be typical, too – like, let's say that this is happening over and over again –

S: Yeah.

J: – like, at some point, some doctors are going to come up with different ideas, they're going to try it out, you know. The trial-and-error process happens, and—i hate to say it, but—this girl is probably going to be one of the people that gets tested on with new ideas.

S: Well, I mean – well, if you're really testing then you should be doing a research protocol. If you're just applying the best knowledge that we have to an individual patient, that's – a certain amount of trial and error with that that's not really experimentation. So, there is a difference there. So, I don't know. The other interesting question that I'm kind of alluding to is, what role do the patient or the advocacy groups play? I think, a lot of times, that they are helpful in raising awareness for a disease or a disorder and raising funding, and advocating for patients. You know, I've seen, I think, there's a lot of very effective, very good patient advocacy groups out there. But, sometimes, they put their nickel down on a specific scientific answer, and that's not their job.

J: Yeah.

S: It's not their job to predict or demand that science give them the answer they want. And, you know, unfortunately, some people want the answer to be "an infection"—not "genes", not, you know, "We don't know".

J: Yeah. It's curable. That's the one they want.

S: Of course, who – that's the answer I would want to have! "It's something outside that is, you know, foreign, that can be cured, and that can reverse my child to the way that they were". Who – every parent wants that to be the answer, but sometimes you – you know, you have to step back from what you want and listen to the evidence. That's the – that's the scientist's, that's the physician's job, you know. You should just let them do their job, you know.

J: All right, so, I want to bring up a quick side point on this.

S: Yeah.

J: So, as an example, let's say, fifty years ago, let's say this was happening. What stance do you think the public would have differently than what we're seeing today?

S: It's the same, and this ''did'' happen fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, you know, she would be diagnosed with neurosyphilis—maybe not somebody who was sixteen, but that was the stand-in for what we now would, you know, the same subculture would diagnose with chronic Lyme. There were believers in that. There were physicians who believed in treatments like chelation therapy, you know, and science proved it wrong, and they said, "Well, we don't care, we're going to still do it. We're going to come up with – We're just going to keep coming up with special pleading and alternate theories, and form our own societies and our own – and just keep doing it, and say that it's all a conspiracy."

J: Mm-hmm.

S: So, but, I think that it's just the turnaround time is so much faster because of the Internet. Like, another example: CCSVI, right? The alleged blockage in the veins that drained blood from the brain, causing multiple sclerosis. It's that – that whole process—of Dr. Zamboni proposing this entity and a treatment, to it being researched, to it being refuted, to, you know, patient advocacy groups springing up and calling for conspiracies and calling for research and demanding that science give them the answer that they want—all has taken place within a few years. We've seen that cycle happen right before our eyes. So, the Internet is just making it happen a lot quicker and a lot bigger, I think. But it's always been this way.

J: So do you have any ideas on what we could do? Could the skeptical community do anything to help this (''inaudible'')?

S: Well, I think what we do is, we discuss the issue from a science, logical, critical thinking point of view, you know. We point out the role of science in this, and we, I think, we try to bring the public discourse to a level that can deal with it in a more productive way, rather than the conspiracy mongering, sort of lowest-common-denominator that it would otherwise sink to.

J: Yeah.

=== Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44)===
* pnd

== Live Q&A (51:06) ==
* Questions from the CSICon audience

== Science or Fiction (55:19) ==

S: Item number one. A new study finds that astronauts who spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. Item number two. Scientists have discovered the first feathered dinosaur in the western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers. And item number three. Researchers find that, at the molecular level, evolutionary changes can be highly predictable.

== Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:08:11) ==
<blockquote>Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.</blockquote>
J: Paul Kurtz!

{{Outro1}}

== References ==
<references/>

{{Navigation}}

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-07T12:15:35Z

Cornelioid: /* This Day in Skepticism (1:28) */ transcribing template

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|episodeDate = 3rd November 2012 
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|qowText = Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality. 
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|}}

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

?: – a live edition of my favorite podcast and radio show. So, we're going to have Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Jay Novella, Even Berenstein, and – and a woman –

(''laughter'')

?: – join us. It's the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe!

(''applause'')

S: Hello, and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

(''applause'')

S: Today is Thursday, October 25th, 2012, and we are live from [http://www.csiconference.org/ CSICon 2012].

(''applause'')

Joining me, as always, are Bob Novella –

B: Hey everybody!

(''cheers'')

S: – Rebecca Watson –

R: Hello, everyone!

(''cheers'')

''audience member'': I love you, Rebecca!

R: I love you, too!

S: – Jay Novella...Jay Novella –

J: Wooooo! Rebecca, yeah!

(''cheers'')

R: I love you, Jay!

S: – and Evan Berenstein.

E: Hello, Nashville!

(''cheers'')

S: So, how're you guys doing? How do you like Nashville?

J: It's awesome. I didn't – I thought people were going to literally be playing guitar when I got off the airplane.

B: Oh, come on, Jay.

S: Yeah, in the airport, you know?

J: Yeah.

== This Day in Skepticism (1:28) ==
November 3, 1957 Sputnik 2 launched

{{transcribing
|transcriber = Cornelioid
}}

== In Memorium ==
=== Paul Kurtz (3:45) ===
* 1925-2012

S: Well, we are going to start the new segment of the show with an ''in memoriam''. We do like to, on the ''Skeptic's Guide'', pause to remember those members of the skeptical community who have passed, and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] died several days ago, just the day before the organizers were coming down to the conference. He died on Sunday. He was 85 years old. It was 1925 to 2012, so that is 86. I can do math. (''audience laughter'') You'll know why i was confused in a moment.

R: 'Cause you're terrible at math?

S: Yes. So, before we get the show started, Ron Lindsay and Kendrick Frazier talked about Paul Kurtz. You know, he was one of the giants of the skeptical movement, of the skeptical community. You know, he was largely responsible for organizing the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, founding Prometheus Books, CFI, [http://www.secularhumanism.org/ Secular Humanism]. He was an academic, a philosopher. He really gave a lot of weight to the movement early on. He made it to that – he broke it to that next level. It wasn't that, you know, before he came on board. So he has to be remembered for that. We did have some interactions with Paul along the years. The first year that we started – (''audience cooing'')

R: Baby Steve!

E: Aww.

S: I was a little younger back then.

R: He's three years old there.

B: He's only half-grey there.

S: (''laughing'') I'm only half-grey!

E: A little less grey, yep.

S: You can mark my age by my greyness up until about ten years ago, when i went totally grey. Right when we got started, in 1996, you know, CSICOP, now CSI, you know, they were the big national skeptical organization. They'd definitely – They took us under their wing, you know, gave us their support, their local membership list, so that we could get our movement going. And i remember meeting Paul at the first World Skeptics Conference, and he was immediately—like, you know, your grandfather—like, you know, very, very comfortably took on that air of being a mentor. It's like, "Yeah, this is great. You're welcome to the skeptical movement." So i definitely remember him fondly in that way. A few years later, Paul organized a meeting of the local skeptical groups. In the picture here you can see me again with Bob, Perry, and Evan. The four of us came up together –

J: Now, if i remember correctly, Rebecca, you and i were off being badass somewhere else, right?

R: I think that's what was happening, yeah.

S: – and, i think, in the foreground, that's Colonel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Nickell Joe Nickell], isn't it?

E: Colonel.

S: Yeah, he had broke his leg in Spain, or something?

R: Round of applause for Colonel Joe Nickell!

E: I remember that.

(''applause'')

S: Joe actually is going to come up, and he's going to read a poem that he wrote, i believe, about Paul.

JN: Paul was a great supporter of the arts, and i hope he would have liked this. The poem is called "Book of Seasons: An elegy". (''Uncertain re: permission to reproduce poem'')

S: Thank you, Joe.

=== Leon Jaroff (7:34) ===
* 1926-2012

S: This same weekend, Saturday before the show, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_(magazine) Leon Jaroff] also died. ''He'' was 85, hence my confusion. So, Leon Jariff—not a big name in the skeptical community recently, and if you ask, you know, people at conventions like this if they knew who he was – I mean, in fact, right before the show Rebecca said to me, "Who's Leon Jaroff?"

R: (''indignant gasp'')

S: Sorry, Rebecca.

(''audience laughter'')

S: But he was perhaps one of the most skeptical journalists that we have had.

B: Yeah.

S: He was the science columnist for ''Time Magazine''. It was he who said, "You know, popularizing science is important, you know, we should start a science-dedicated magazine." And that was ''Discover Magazine''. That was him. He was not afraid to be a hard-nosed skeptic when writing about scientific issues. So, for example, when writing about chiropractors, [http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,213482,00.html he wrote],

<blockquote>
Chiropractors also employ a bewildering variety of weird practices to diagnose their patients. Some use applied kinesiology, a muscle test that supposedly can diagnose allergies and diseased organs. Hair analysis and iris readings are commonplace in the profession. Even sillier are many of the treatments that chiropractors use and recommend: homeopathic potions, colon irrigation, magnetic therapy, enzyme pills, colored-light therapy, and something called "balancing body energy," among other mystical procedures with undocumented effects.
</blockquote>

S: That's from a mainstream journalist writing in ''Time Magazine''. Do we see this kind of thing today? I don't think so.

B: Nope.

(''audience applause'')

S: So, you know, we do have to, I think, also note the support that Jaroff gave to such a good science journalism, and that kind of hard-nosed, skeptical science journalism is definitely something we miss. That's a void that, I think, that we in the skeptical community have to fill, but, unfortunately, it is a void.

== News Items ==
=== Big Bang Conference at CERN (9:31)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19870036 Big Bang and religion mixed in Cern debate]

S: Rebecca –

R: Yes!

S: – this is a different quote. It's not as good a quote.

<blockquote>
Science in isolation is great for producing stuff, but not so good for producing ideas.
</blockquote>

R: Mm-hmm.

S: Who said that?

R: That was said by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Pinsent Andrew Pinsent] at the Ramsey Center for Science and Religion. What I particularly liked about this quote is that it is completely reversed – it is the exact opposite of what I would have suggested.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I would say that science is actually really good at ideas, but, in order to produce stuff, you have to add something else. You know, like, they might be able to figure out lasers, but to make a CD player you need a marketing executive.

S: Or death ray.

R: Thank you. Yeah, of course. Why didn't I go there first?

(''laughter'')

R: Yeah, so, this quote comes from a recent article that the BBC produced: "Big Bang and religion mixed in CERN debates". Apparently, there was a conference recently that CERN held—you remember CERN, you know, the guys who, apparently, may have found –

J: Higgs!

R: – the Higgs boson.

S: A boson with Higgs-like properties.

R: A Higgs-like thing.

S: Boson, yeah.

R: A Higgish. I like "Higgish" –

B: "Higgish"?

R: – a little bit.

J: (''laughing'') "A little bit!"

S: "Higgy"?

B: (''singing, inaudible'') ''Higgy again."

R: So, yes. Apparently, I don't know the purpose – I don't know what, who dreamt this up, but what I'm thinking is that someone was concerned that they may have found a particle that many people know as the "God particle", and, so, they're concerned that they're going to be excommunicated or, you know, that people will rebel—religious people will rebel—against science. Basically, we'll have some sort of Dark Ages–esque thing happening, and, so, maybe somebody at CERN thought, "Well, we should have this conference where we talk about how religious people should be OK with the Higgs boson."

B: Mm-hmm.

R: So, those are the good intentions that I'm assuming are behind this conference that has speakers such as this. The quotes in here are pretty fun, and none of them have any amount of intelligence to them. Steve, you're the one who brought this one to my attention here –

S: Yes.

R: I'm interested in what – we've talked a little bit before about things like the Templeton Foundation, which is an organization that gives out a prize – gives out prizes to people who can explore science in a religious context, basically. And I'm a bit opposed to it. I feel like it's muddying the waters. I think we don't ''need'' to bring religion into what people are doing at CERN.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I think those two things are happily separated, but I'm interested in knowing your feelings on this.

S: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think trying to introduce theology into science is misguided. You know, this conference was specifically about the origin of the universe. So, it's not just about scientific issues in particular. I think the thinking, at least on the part of the theologians who were quoted about this conference, is that, well, you're talking about the origin of the universe. That's a really big question, and religion is about answering the really big questions—not science. Science is narrow and reductionist, and makes stuff, but can't really grapple with the big questions of our origins. And that's exactly incorrect, as you were saying. That's a complete knock to science. I mean, science is, in fact, the only human intellectual endeavor that ''can'' answer any empirical question about the origin of the universe.

R: Yeah.

J: So, was the conference, though, the scientists trying to appease religious people? The saying that –

R: Well, you know, apparently, this was – the conference was done on the part of CERN, according to BBC, and that's what I find troubling. I'm totally OK with a conference that religious people host, you know, and the topic might be "How do we –" you know, "How do we consider our theology now that we know ''X'', ''Y'', and ''Z''—now that science has discovered this? What does that mean for ''our'' belief system?" And I think that's fine, but, you know, apparently, the theologians who were there seem to think that this was a chance to ''debate'' the scientists –

J: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

R: – and, no! Why would you do that? Debate is completely the opposite direction of where you want to go.

S: It also – I mean, the quotes seem to me like a desperate grasp at relevance, trying to make it seem like they're – you know, that theology is still relevant to questions about origins of the universe, when, in fact, science has completely displaced it from that endeavor.

J: So, did it end up with, like, a fistfight? Like, what happened?

(''laughter'')

E: Science won.

R: I haven't found any evidence of any arrests, so, apparently –

S: There were no fisticuffs?

J: That really must've been awkward as hell, though, right? Like, they're like, sitting there, like, after a whole day, and they're like, "Uh, OK, it's over now."

E: Something tells me they're not going to be doing this again. They're going to learn from this.

S: I don't know.

R: Well, I mean, it's actually not even – like, I wish it had been that exciting. But, instead, it just seems like it was really ''boring'' –

E: Yeah.

R: – and nobody came to ''any'' conclusions. Because you ''can't'', you know?

S: Yeah.

R: You're just having a discussion of, like, well, you know, "But what don't we know?"

=== Italian Earthquake Scientists Convicted (14:57)===
* [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/22/us-italy-earthquake-court-idUSBRE89L13V20121022 Italian scientists convicted over earthquake warning]

S: Now, we're trying to keep – we like to keep our live shows really light –

(''laughter'')

E: So far, so good.

S: So, we thought we'd talk about a horrible earthquake that killed over three hundred people.

E: Yeah, let's go there.

R: Good intro. Good intro there.

S: But there's actually a better story embedded in that. There were six Italian scientists, who were recently convicted of manslaughter –

B: Yeah.

S: – for failure to properly communicate the warnings about the upcoming L'Aquila earthquake in 2009. Yeah, we've been following this story, you know, since it happened. The quick version is that there were a number of small tremors in this very earthquake-prone part of Italy, and the geologists—the local geologists—you know, were following it. And their opinion was that, well, these tremors are very common. Most such tremors are not followed by major quakes. Most major quakes are not preceded by these kinds of tremors. So, the probability of a major quake occurring is not particularly higher, you know, now, just because of these tremors, than at any time, and, therefore, there's no cause for alarm. Now, they were specifically asked during a press conference, "Should we panic?" You know, "Should we evacuate?" And they said "No. There's no reason to evacuate. Stay at home and drink a glass of wine."

B: Steve, was this about a year ago that we covered this?

S: 2009. 2009 –

B: Oh, wow. (''inaudible'')

S: – so, was the quake, and then the court trial started about a year ago, and now the decision came down that the six scientists were convicted to six years – I think six years in prison and something like, you know, millions of dollars in damages for manslaughter—for the deaths of the people who didn't evacuate because they – of their reassurances that there was nothing to be worried about.

R: That's horrific.

J: Well, i, you know, to play devil's advocate real quick, if there was true negligence—like, if they didn't follow through with things that they needed to do, if they did a terrible job at analyzing the data, in a fashion that – where the data could have been analyzed better, or they actually weren't asking their peers for the information—i can understand if there was extreme negligence.

S: Right.

J: But, even still, like, that's very hard to prove, and I just don't understand –

S: Well, I mean, not really. The question is, was their opinion within the standard for their profession? That's—in my opinion—that's the only real question here. You can't be blamed for being wrong, right? You can't be blamed for a bad outcome if you were following the standard. Now, of course, scientists can't predict earthquakes. You can't predict when an earthquake is going to occur. That's the bottom line. What – every statement they said was truthful, you know, every factual statement. "These tremors do not necessarily mean that there's an earthquake coming, and they are not a reason to evacuate. We don't evacuate every city where there's tremors because there might be a major quake, because it's not that predictive." So, that was not negligent. No, and they weren't really being accused of negligence. They were basically being accused of poorly communicating to the public. It seems to be based on a lot of false premises about what scientists ''can know''—what an expert about, you know, an earthquake, a geologist, expert ''can know''.

R: Yeah, they've been convicted for not using a magical power they don't have.

S: Yeah.

R: They might as well have convicted all the psychics in Italy for not accurately predicting this earthquake.

J: I think we need to be careful—i don't disagree, of course. I don't think that these men should be going to jail for this at all—but it is an important thing to state that, I think, people should go to prison, or get in trouble ''legally'', if they are misrepresenting science or – right? So you see where I'm going with this.

S: Well, yeah. If you are –

J: If you're setting that premise—you're saying, "Hey, these guys screwed up, they didn't do what they were supposed to do, they didn't communicate to us the real possible outcomes here", whatever—and, like –

S: Yeah.

J: – I'll reiterate, I don't think that they should be going to jail—

B: Well, I don't agree –

J: —but, I do think, though, that that standard that that court set needs to be applied all the way down the ladder.

B: Yeah, but, Jay, like, someone saying that "I have a cure for cancer and it's scientifically proven" but it's a sham?

J: Exactly, right? So, if they're going to actually take those scientists out and say "You're done. You're not performing science anymore and you're going to jail for that bad decision or information you gave", well, hello! Then, you know, all of a sudden, a million lawsuits need to be filed.

S: But, it wasn't – to clarify, though, it wasn't ''bad'', it was just ''unlucky''. I mean, doctors encounter this all the time, you know. You are asked to decide, you know, what tests to order, what diagnoses a patient might have. There's a whole lot of liability involved with that. You can't be convicted of malpractice just because of a bad outcome if what you did was within the standard of care.

B: Right.

S: So, was the information they were giving to the public within the standard for the profession? If the answer is "yes", the fact that there was a low-probability earthquake the next week is not their fault.

E: Right.

S: It doesn't change the fact – you know, if they're saying there's a 99% chance that there's not going to be an earthquake, and then the 1% thing happens, they were still right –

J: Yeah.

S: – in saying that it was unlikely.

R: Yeah.

E: Didn't the evidence show, basically, that they performed correctly, essentially? They did not –

S: That's the consensus. I mean, so, there's worldwide outrage, especially among the scientific community (''inaudible'') –

B: This has got to be shot down in a higher court.

S: Yeah.

B: This can't – can't possibly stand.

E: I hope so.

S: Well, there's two appeals left. There's two appeals, and they will stay out of prison before those appeals. So, the United States National Academy of Science, the Royal Academy of Science—the Royal Society, rather—issued a joint statement saying that "that is why we must protest the verdict in Italy. If it becomes a precedent in law, it could lead to a situation in which scientists will be afraid to give expert opinion."

J: Yeah, that's devastating.

E: Mm-hmm.

S: So, it would have a chilling effect. What – you know, what geologist is going to, you know, talk to the public in Italy now, if you could wind up in jail and, you know, financially devastated, and your career devastated, because you can't predict the future, you know, because you don't have a crystal ball? It's insane. It's insane.

J: Yeah. To think that they're going after these scientists, and they're not going after the rampant quackery throughout –

S: Well, there's that, too.

E: I wonder how much pressure they came under from, like, the families, the survivors, of this terrible, terrible devastation –

J: Oh yeah, they had to hang someone.

E: – and I imagine they put a lot of pressure on politicians and other people in order to hold ''somebody'' accountable.

J: They have to. They had to send someone down the river for that.

B: Did they have a trial?

S: Yeah.

B: Did they have witnesses and experts coming in?

S: Yeah. Yep.

B: I'd love to know the details of what exactly happened, because how could –

(''laughter'')

S: So, we'll see if the worldwide backlash has an effect. I mean, again, they do have two appeals left, so we'll definitely follow it.

=== Whale Makes Human Sounds (21:35)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20026938 Beluga whale 'makes human-like sounds']

S: All right, Rebecca, so, we have a cute animal –

R: Thank you.

S: – we're going to talk about now.

J: This is a happy one!

R: Just tell me this narwhal or whatever is alive.

S: It's a whale.

E: It's alive and well.

S: It's a beluga whale.

B: It sort of looks like a narwhal.

R: Tell me this beluga is alive!

E: That's NOC the beluga. They're very much alive.

R: It's not a beluga?

E: "NOC". N-O-C.

S: "NOC". NOC the beluga.

R: Oh! "That's NOC."

(''laughter'')

R: I was about to say, "No, ''that is a beluga''."

S: Sounds like a children's song.

E: It does sound like a children's –

S: Evan, sing it.

E: No.

S: OK.

J: Don't change it! Please don't –

E: If my daughter was here, maybe. But, no. So, what's important about NOC the beluga? Well, OK, so, picture this: You are part of the National Marine Mammal Foundation, OK, and you're in the tank, swimming around with the whales and stuff, and, all of a sudden, you hear somebody—you hear a voice—call your name. Something to the effect that – "Get out of the water! Get out of the water!" So, you're in the tank and you come up and you say, "OK, who told me to get out of the water? Who told me to get out of the water?" And the other scientists and people are looking around you like, "Nobody? What the heck are you talking about?" And, he's like, "Well, I definitely ''heard'' that!" Well, what did he actually hear? Well, apparently, NOC the beluga made some noises very reminiscent of human noises. Beluga whales are, you know, incredible creatures. Their calls – They're known as the canaries of the sea. They have a very high-frequency, high-pitched tone to their noises that they make, but they make lots of different kinds of noises. They can emit up to eleven different kinds of sounds—crackles, whistles, trills, squawks—all sorts of things. But, it's been rumored that these whales can emit noises that sound like humans talking. And, for the first time, they've actually recorded NOC the whale making these noises, and they have it on tape. And we have it on tape.

R: Nah.

(''NOC makes unnervingly human-sounding noises'')

R: Did he maybe just swallow a kazoo?

(''laughter'')

J: Everybody has a drunk neighbor that makes those noises.

(''laughter'')

E: Oh, gosh. Who knows what the heck he was saying? You know, dolphins have been taught to mimic noises that kind of sound like human voices, but, before this, there's been no record of an animal ''spontaneously'' coming up and making these kinds of noises. This is the first evidence, the first hard evidence we have of it.

R: Here's – I have a theory. I have a theory. I have a theory that – so, whales, in general, are incredibly intelligent –

E: Oh yeah.

R: – possibly as smart as us, but they don't want thumbs, or any way to talk to us –

E: Or fire.

R: – and I feel like they do, basically – That's true. No, I saw Spongebob once. There was fire under the sea. I think it can be done.

S: Yep, but they don't have nanotechnology, though.

R: They don't. So, my theory is that whales are basically, like – they have – it's like they have locked-in syndrome, you know? Where they're just –

J: Oh, no.

R: – super-intelligent, and there's all these people around them, and they're just messing with them –

J: So, he was screaming, actually –

R: Yeah! And, so, he's been like, his whole life, he's been in this stupid little – like, he's in captivity, right? So, he's been in this stupid little aquarium, and he's just, like, "I hate all of you! And I'm going to will myself to tell you, because you're too stupid to understand!"

E: So, basically, what's going on here is, the whale has learned to change – rapidly change pressure within its naval cavity in order to create these sounds. And, it hasn't – the whale is able to over-inflate what's known as its vestibular sac in its blowhole, which is normally acts to stop water from basically coming in. So, the whale is going through a lot of, you know, effort, essentially, to try to make these noises. And I'm sure they're going to be trying to figure out exactly, you know, basically, ''why'' is the whale doing this?

S: Well, he just – this whale was – did spend his life in captivity –

E: Yeah.

S: – so, he did hear human speech a lot, and maybe he's just, to some extent, mimicking the sounds that he grew up hearing his whole life.

J: It's definitely – it definitely has a human sound to it, in the cadence and everything.

S: Yeah.

J: I mean, he's intelligent enough to mimic a human, which is really cool.

R: Yeah.

J: And, then, you always think, you know, if he can mimic a human—if his brain is advanced that much—you know, maybe he –

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But, is he mimicking humans or making fun of humans? You know, like people make fun of other languages?

R: Yeah, he's just like "Weh! Weh! Weh! This is what you sound like!"

E: Yeah. You stupid bald monkey and (''inaudible'')! Get out of here!

B: Sounds like a false dichotomy.

=== PANDAS Controversy (26:18)===
* [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/a-pandas-story/ A PANDAS Story]

S: So, we're going to talk about – going from talking about beluga whales to talking about PANDAS! Except, we're not talking about pandas, because we're talking about –

E: Wait.

R: Stop toying with my emotions, Steve!

S: I had to put a cute picture of a panda up there for you, Rebecca. We are talking about pediatric autoimmune –

R: It makes sense.

S: – neuropsychiatric disorder associated with –

E: I didn't know PANDA was an acronym. Cool!

R: Steve, I miss the panda.

S: – streptococcal infection—or, PANDAS. See? There's a panda.

(''laughter, cooing'')

E: Aww!

R: Yay.

S: We're talking about PANDAS –

E: Aww.

R: Boo.

J: Oh.

E: That's worse.

S: – which is a legitimately controversial medical diagnosis! So, essentially, what happens is, children suddenly develop ticks—like Tourette syndrome—and psychiatric disorders—obsessive–compulsive disorder—and it is thought that, in some cases, that it is actually – the inciting event is an infection—bacteria—streptococcal infection. Now, of course, it's always difficult to establish the reality of a new disease. Unless you get all your ducks in a row, and all the, you know, pathology all adds up, it's sometimes difficult to identify a legitimate new syndrome and to prove that – cause and effect. So, correlation is one thing. As we know, correlation is not ''necessarily'' causation. And, so, the syndrome exists. There are – the number of physicians who have identified the sudden onset psychiatric – neuropsychiatric disorder, and in some cases it is temporally associated with a streptococcal infection. But that's not the same thing as saying that the strep infection ''caused'' the neuropsychiatric syndrome. So, that's – and there's the controversy. Now, of course, we live in the modern Internet age. So, as soon as a scientist says, "I think that there's this syndrome—I want to call it PANDAS—and – sort of, you know, a psychiatric syndrome provoked by a bacterial infection", of course, there are now support groups, and there's groups on the Internet, and there's patient groups supporting this diagnosis before the science is even settled. And, then, of course, once that happens, when you try to do more science, or have any kind of discussion about whether or not this is a real syndrome, you have parents and patient groups and advocacy groups, you know, calling you all kinds of nasty names and saying there's a conspiracy against people with PANDAS, it's all the insurance companies and Big Pharma and evil doctors or whatever. So, that's the situation that we're in the middle of right now, unfortunately, is that, before the science is settled, you know, there's the scientific controversy, then there's the public controversy. This came to the media attention recently because of a 16-year-old girl called Elizabeth Wray. She developed, you know, a syndrome like PANDAS with ticks and psychological disorders, was diagnosed by a physician with PANDAS, and then was transferred to Boston's Children's Hospital for – presumably for further treatment of PANDAS. Now, the story that is going around the PANDAS community is that once she got to Boston University—or Boston Children's Hospital—she was told – the parents were told, "We don't believe that PANDAS is real – that it exists", and then they essentially admitted their daughter to the psychiatric unit and started treating her with psychiatric medications. Now, I don't know if that's true, because the doctors and the hospital are not telling their side of the story because of patient confidentiality. So, we don't know what their side of the story is. We only know the parents' side of the story, filtered through the PANDAS community. Unfortunately, now there's – this story has taken on a life of its own. There's a Free Elizabeth Wray movement going on within the PANDAS community, they're telling all kinds of horror stories about Boston Children's Hospital, and, you know, we can't verify any of it. What's interesting in reading about it is that each side has their narrative—and I wrote about this on Science-Based Medicine—because one of the things that – the ideas that we're wrestling with in the skeptical community is that—well, all right, we have, I think, a good approach to critical thinking, we understand a lot about self-deception, about the nature of science and pseudoscience—but we don't always have a good story to tell the public, or we have a hard time convincing mainstream outlets that we have – that our story is an interesting and good one. You know, we have to really market our narrative—the skeptical narrative. When you read about stories like this, the PANDAS proponents have a really compelling emotional narrative. It may be total B.S.—i don't know—but it's very compelling. They have a story of a child suffering from an unusual disease, parents who just want to do what's right for her—I believe all those things are correct—and then they are, essentially, being abused by a dismissive and skeptical medical establishment who doesn't believe in this disease, and that is treating their child with perhaps harmful, you know, psychiatric medications. They even – this went to court. Apparently, the hospital thought that the parents were being negligent in not allowing them to give proper standard of care—psychiatric treatment—to their child, and they wanted to have custody taken away from the parents, and they wanted to admit Elizabeth to a locked psychiatric ward—again, not sure – I can't verify those from the hospital's side of things. A judge – a Massachusetts judge essentially made her a ward of the state while they sorted out what was going on, but they did not grant the hospital their request to treat her in the way that they wanted to. So, they essentially just – the state took her out of everybody's hands for a moment – for the moment. So, it's interesting. Of course, the PANDAS community, again, is up in arms, you know. The court essentially took custody away from these parents that are only trying to do what's right for their daughter. But, of course, you could see the other narrative—you know, let's assume that the physicians think that—even if you think – whether or not you think PANDAS really exists—they think that she has a psychiatric illness, the parents are in denial, they're pursuing this false diagnosis, and they're, you know, refusing standard medical care. That's a story, too.

B: What if you just pulled out the whole strep association, and just treat it like a "pandisorder"? Is their beef that it's associated with strep, and they don't think there's any association? Why don't they just treat it like a neuropsychiatric disorder –

S: Yeah.

B: – and forget about the whole strep association?

S: Well, because the strep association would lead you to treat with things like antibiotics. So, that's the question: Should you treat it with antibiotics, or should you treat her like a psychiatric (''inaudible'') patient?

J: Why not both? I mean, why wouldn't you –

S: Well, she has had at least one round of antibiotics. You can also treat it like an autoimmune disease, with, like, intravenous globulin, for example. So, I mean, these are real medical questions. Do we treat it like an infection, do we treat it like a post-infectious auto-immune disease, or do we treat it like a psychiatric disorder? Those are real questions.

J: Steve, are you saying pandas don't exist? Let me just get this straight.

(''laughter'')

S: So, well, I did – to give a serious answer to your sarcastic question, I did –

R: My favorite kind.

S: – take the opportunity – I'm good that way. I'm good that way. I did take the opportunity just to familiarize myself with the PANDAS literature—again, I always emphasize, I'm no an expert in this, but I can read the literature and give my opinion like a science journalist—i think it's genuinely controversial. When I read the research, there's lots of – the ducks are not in a row. So, when you do things like treat kids who apparently have PANDAS with antibiotics in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, they don't necessarily improve. And, if you look for the antibodies that are supposed to be there, they don't necessarily correlate with the disease onset or with the existence of strep. So –

B: So, this is clearly not like autism and vaccines. It's just more complicated than that.

S: So, no. So, right. So, autism and vaccines, like, I would say, that's been studied enough to say that autism's – that autism is not caused by vaccines. We can say that. We can make the negative statement. I cannot make the negative statement that PANDAS does not exist, only that the research so far has not reached the threshold where we can agree that it does exist and that there is some actual negative data—there's some positive data, too—so it's legitimately controversial. It did remind me, though, of the chronic Lyme disease controversy—

R: Yeah.

S: —which is very common in New England—again, where they think that a number of symptoms, including neurological symptoms, can be caused by a bacterial infection and treated with antibiotics. And the same – there's a lot of overlap in those two communities, you know.

J: Steve, are you saying that the public has unrealistic expectations?

S: Well, I think – it's partly that. I mean, I think the public is uncomfortable with the uncertainty, and they like this sort of hero–villain narrative, so they paint the medical community as the villains, and—except for those maverick physicians who understand. They're Lyme-literate, or they understand PANDAS, so they're the heroes—and, then, the insurance companies don't want to pay for, you know, over-and-over recurrent courses of IV antibiotics, so they're the villains, you know. They're not—I'm not defending insurance companies, but sometimes they actually – sometimes they're right. They don't want to pay for things that are not science-based or evidence-based. So, it's complicated. And, you know, how do we – so, how do we deal with a child with this disorder when we don't know what the best scientific answer is—we don't know if it's autoimmune, infectious, or psychiatric? We just have to, you know, do the best we can—and there may be different physicians who would take different approaches—but to portray it as "PANDAS definitely exists. If you don't believe in it, you're dismissive and you're mean and evil, or you're protecting some kind of Big Pharma grant that you're getting"—they always bring that up—rather than saying, "You know, we really want to know the right answer, but we just haven't found it yet. It's still – it's legitimately controversial."

J: Yeah, I think what you're saying does confirm what I was thinking, is that the public wants an answer, science is not yet done figuring this one out, and –

S: Yeah. Like the earthquake one, right?

J: Yeah.

S: Sometimes the answer is, "We don't know yet", you know. "We need to do more research". In medicine, we have to make decisions with imperfect, you know, information, so, you know.

J: Wouldn't it be typical, too – like, let's say that this is happening over and over again –

S: Yeah.

J: – like, at some point, some doctors are going to come up with different ideas, they're going to try it out, you know. The trial-and-error process happens, and—i hate to say it, but—this girl is probably going to be one of the people that gets tested on with new ideas.

S: Well, I mean – well, if you're really testing then you should be doing a research protocol. If you're just applying the best knowledge that we have to an individual patient, that's – a certain amount of trial and error with that that's not really experimentation. So, there is a difference there. So, I don't know. The other interesting question that I'm kind of alluding to is, what role do the patient or the advocacy groups play? I think, a lot of times, that they are helpful in raising awareness for a disease or a disorder and raising funding, and advocating for patients. You know, I've seen, I think, there's a lot of very effective, very good patient advocacy groups out there. But, sometimes, they put their nickel down on a specific scientific answer, and that's not their job.

J: Yeah.

S: It's not their job to predict or demand that science give them the answer they want. And, you know, unfortunately, some people want the answer to be "an infection"—not "genes", not, you know, "We don't know".

J: Yeah. It's curable. That's the one they want.

S: Of course, who – that's the answer I would want to have! "It's something outside that is, you know, foreign, that can be cured, and that can reverse my child to the way that they were". Who – every parent wants that to be the answer, but sometimes you – you know, you have to step back from what you want and listen to the evidence. That's the – that's the scientist's, that's the physician's job, you know. You should just let them do their job, you know.

J: All right, so, I want to bring up a quick side point on this.

S: Yeah.

J: So, as an example, let's say, fifty years ago, let's say this was happening. What stance do you think the public would have differently than what we're seeing today?

S: It's the same, and this ''did'' happen fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, you know, she would be diagnosed with neurosyphilis—maybe not somebody who was sixteen, but that was the stand-in for what we now would, you know, the same subculture would diagnose with chronic Lyme. There were believers in that. There were physicians who believed in treatments like chelation therapy, you know, and science proved it wrong, and they said, "Well, we don't care, we're going to still do it. We're going to come up with – We're just going to keep coming up with special pleading and alternate theories, and form our own societies and our own – and just keep doing it, and say that it's all a conspiracy."

J: Mm-hmm.

S: So, but, I think that it's just the turnaround time is so much faster because of the Internet. Like, another example: CCSVI, right? The alleged blockage in the veins that drained blood from the brain, causing multiple sclerosis. It's that – that whole process—of Dr. Zamboni proposing this entity and a treatment, to it being researched, to it being refuted, to, you know, patient advocacy groups springing up and calling for conspiracies and calling for research and demanding that science give them the answer that they want—all has taken place within a few years. We've seen that cycle happen right before our eyes. So, the Internet is just making it happen a lot quicker and a lot bigger, I think. But it's always been this way.

J: So do you have any ideas on what we could do? Could the skeptical community do anything to help this (''inaudible'')?

S: Well, I think what we do is, we discuss the issue from a science, logical, critical thinking point of view, you know. We point out the role of science in this, and we, I think, we try to bring the public discourse to a level that can deal with it in a more productive way, rather than the conspiracy mongering, sort of lowest-common-denominator that it would otherwise sink to.

J: Yeah.

=== Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44)===
* pnd

== Live Q&A (51:06) ==
* Questions from the CSICon audience

== Science or Fiction (55:19) ==

S: Item number one. A new study finds that astronauts who spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. Item number two. Scientists have discovered the first feathered dinosaur in the western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers. And item number three. Researchers find that, at the molecular level, evolutionary changes can be highly predictable.

== Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:08:11) ==
<blockquote>Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.</blockquote>
J: Paul Kurtz!

{{Outro1}}

== References ==
<references/>

{{Navigation}}

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-07T04:30:06Z

Cornelioid: /* Introduction */ full segment

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|episodeDate = 3rd November 2012 
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|forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,43845.0.html
|qowText = Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality. 
|qowAuthor = [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] 
|}}

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

?: – a live edition of my favorite podcast and radio show. So, we're going to have Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Jay Novella, Even Berenstein, and – and a woman –

(''laughter'')

?: – join us. It's the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe!

(''applause'')

S: Hello, and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

(''applause'')

S: Today is Thursday, October 25th, 2012, and we are live from [http://www.csiconference.org/ CSICon 2012].

(''applause'')

Joining me, as always, are Bob Novella –

B: Hey everybody!

(''cheers'')

S: – Rebecca Watson –

R: Hello, everyone!

(''cheers'')

''audience member'': I love you, Rebecca!

R: I love you, too!

S: – Jay Novella...Jay Novella –

J: Wooooo! Rebecca, yeah!

(''cheers'')

R: I love you, Jay!

S: – and Evan Berenstein.

E: Hello, Nashville!

(''cheers'')

S: So, how're you guys doing? How do you like Nashville?

J: It's awesome. I didn't – I thought people were going to literally be playing guitar when I got off the airplane.

B: Oh, come on, Jay.

S: Yeah, in the airport, you know?

J: Yeah.

== This Day in Skepticism (1:28) ==
November 3, 1957 Sputnik 2 launched

== In Memorium ==
=== Paul Kurtz (3:45) ===
* 1925-2012

S: Well, we are going to start the new segment of the show with an ''in memoriam''. We do like to, on the ''Skeptic's Guide'', pause to remember those members of the skeptical community who have passed, and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] died several days ago, just the day before the organizers were coming down to the conference. He died on Sunday. He was 85 years old. It was 1925 to 2012, so that is 86. I can do math. (''audience laughter'') You'll know why i was confused in a moment.

R: 'Cause you're terrible at math?

S: Yes. So, before we get the show started, Ron Lindsay and Kendrick Frazier talked about Paul Kurtz. You know, he was one of the giants of the skeptical movement, of the skeptical community. You know, he was largely responsible for organizing the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, founding Prometheus Books, CFI, [http://www.secularhumanism.org/ Secular Humanism]. He was an academic, a philosopher. He really gave a lot of weight to the movement early on. He made it to that – he broke it to that next level. It wasn't that, you know, before he came on board. So he has to be remembered for that. We did have some interactions with Paul along the years. The first year that we started – (''audience cooing'')

R: Baby Steve!

E: Aww.

S: I was a little younger back then.

R: He's three years old there.

B: He's only half-grey there.

S: (''laughing'') I'm only half-grey!

E: A little less grey, yep.

S: You can mark my age by my greyness up until about ten years ago, when i went totally grey. Right when we got started, in 1996, you know, CSICOP, now CSI, you know, they were the big national skeptical organization. They'd definitely – They took us under their wing, you know, gave us their support, their local membership list, so that we could get our movement going. And i remember meeting Paul at the first World Skeptics Conference, and he was immediately—like, you know, your grandfather—like, you know, very, very comfortably took on that air of being a mentor. It's like, "Yeah, this is great. You're welcome to the skeptical movement." So i definitely remember him fondly in that way. A few years later, Paul organized a meeting of the local skeptical groups. In the picture here you can see me again with Bob, Perry, and Evan. The four of us came up together –

J: Now, if i remember correctly, Rebecca, you and i were off being badass somewhere else, right?

R: I think that's what was happening, yeah.

S: – and, i think, in the foreground, that's Colonel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Nickell Joe Nickell], isn't it?

E: Colonel.

S: Yeah, he had broke his leg in Spain, or something?

R: Round of applause for Colonel Joe Nickell!

E: I remember that.

(''applause'')

S: Joe actually is going to come up, and he's going to read a poem that he wrote, i believe, about Paul.

JN: Paul was a great supporter of the arts, and i hope he would have liked this. The poem is called "Book of Seasons: An elegy". (''Uncertain re: permission to reproduce poem'')

S: Thank you, Joe.

=== Leon Jaroff (7:34) ===
* 1926-2012

S: This same weekend, Saturday before the show, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_(magazine) Leon Jaroff] also died. ''He'' was 85, hence my confusion. So, Leon Jariff—not a big name in the skeptical community recently, and if you ask, you know, people at conventions like this if they knew who he was – I mean, in fact, right before the show Rebecca said to me, "Who's Leon Jaroff?"

R: (''indignant gasp'')

S: Sorry, Rebecca.

(''audience laughter'')

S: But he was perhaps one of the most skeptical journalists that we have had.

B: Yeah.

S: He was the science columnist for ''Time Magazine''. It was he who said, "You know, popularizing science is important, you know, we should start a science-dedicated magazine." And that was ''Discover Magazine''. That was him. He was not afraid to be a hard-nosed skeptic when writing about scientific issues. So, for example, when writing about chiropractors, [http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,213482,00.html he wrote],

<blockquote>
Chiropractors also employ a bewildering variety of weird practices to diagnose their patients. Some use applied kinesiology, a muscle test that supposedly can diagnose allergies and diseased organs. Hair analysis and iris readings are commonplace in the profession. Even sillier are many of the treatments that chiropractors use and recommend: homeopathic potions, colon irrigation, magnetic therapy, enzyme pills, colored-light therapy, and something called "balancing body energy," among other mystical procedures with undocumented effects.
</blockquote>

S: That's from a mainstream journalist writing in ''Time Magazine''. Do we see this kind of thing today? I don't think so.

B: Nope.

(''audience applause'')

S: So, you know, we do have to, I think, also note the support that Jaroff gave to such a good science journalism, and that kind of hard-nosed, skeptical science journalism is definitely something we miss. That's a void that, I think, that we in the skeptical community have to fill, but, unfortunately, it is a void.

== News Items ==
=== Big Bang Conference at CERN (9:31)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19870036 Big Bang and religion mixed in Cern debate]

S: Rebecca –

R: Yes!

S: – this is a different quote. It's not as good a quote.

<blockquote>
Science in isolation is great for producing stuff, but not so good for producing ideas.
</blockquote>

R: Mm-hmm.

S: Who said that?

R: That was said by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Pinsent Andrew Pinsent] at the Ramsey Center for Science and Religion. What I particularly liked about this quote is that it is completely reversed – it is the exact opposite of what I would have suggested.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I would say that science is actually really good at ideas, but, in order to produce stuff, you have to add something else. You know, like, they might be able to figure out lasers, but to make a CD player you need a marketing executive.

S: Or death ray.

R: Thank you. Yeah, of course. Why didn't I go there first?

(''laughter'')

R: Yeah, so, this quote comes from a recent article that the BBC produced: "Big Bang and religion mixed in CERN debates". Apparently, there was a conference recently that CERN held—you remember CERN, you know, the guys who, apparently, may have found –

J: Higgs!

R: – the Higgs boson.

S: A boson with Higgs-like properties.

R: A Higgs-like thing.

S: Boson, yeah.

R: A Higgish. I like "Higgish" –

B: "Higgish"?

R: – a little bit.

J: (''laughing'') "A little bit!"

S: "Higgy"?

B: (''singing, inaudible'') ''Higgy again."

R: So, yes. Apparently, I don't know the purpose – I don't know what, who dreamt this up, but what I'm thinking is that someone was concerned that they may have found a particle that many people know as the "God particle", and, so, they're concerned that they're going to be excommunicated or, you know, that people will rebel—religious people will rebel—against science. Basically, we'll have some sort of Dark Ages–esque thing happening, and, so, maybe somebody at CERN thought, "Well, we should have this conference where we talk about how religious people should be OK with the Higgs boson."

B: Mm-hmm.

R: So, those are the good intentions that I'm assuming are behind this conference that has speakers such as this. The quotes in here are pretty fun, and none of them have any amount of intelligence to them. Steve, you're the one who brought this one to my attention here –

S: Yes.

R: I'm interested in what – we've talked a little bit before about things like the Templeton Foundation, which is an organization that gives out a prize – gives out prizes to people who can explore science in a religious context, basically. And I'm a bit opposed to it. I feel like it's muddying the waters. I think we don't ''need'' to bring religion into what people are doing at CERN.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I think those two things are happily separated, but I'm interested in knowing your feelings on this.

S: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think trying to introduce theology into science is misguided. You know, this conference was specifically about the origin of the universe. So, it's not just about scientific issues in particular. I think the thinking, at least on the part of the theologians who were quoted about this conference, is that, well, you're talking about the origin of the universe. That's a really big question, and religion is about answering the really big questions—not science. Science is narrow and reductionist, and makes stuff, but can't really grapple with the big questions of our origins. And that's exactly incorrect, as you were saying. That's a complete knock to science. I mean, science is, in fact, the only human intellectual endeavor that ''can'' answer any empirical question about the origin of the universe.

R: Yeah.

J: So, was the conference, though, the scientists trying to appease religious people? The saying that –

R: Well, you know, apparently, this was – the conference was done on the part of CERN, according to BBC, and that's what I find troubling. I'm totally OK with a conference that religious people host, you know, and the topic might be "How do we –" you know, "How do we consider our theology now that we know ''X'', ''Y'', and ''Z''—now that science has discovered this? What does that mean for ''our'' belief system?" And I think that's fine, but, you know, apparently, the theologians who were there seem to think that this was a chance to ''debate'' the scientists –

J: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

R: – and, no! Why would you do that? Debate is completely the opposite direction of where you want to go.

S: It also – I mean, the quotes seem to me like a desperate grasp at relevance, trying to make it seem like they're – you know, that theology is still relevant to questions about origins of the universe, when, in fact, science has completely displaced it from that endeavor.

J: So, did it end up with, like, a fistfight? Like, what happened?

(''laughter'')

E: Science won.

R: I haven't found any evidence of any arrests, so, apparently –

S: There were no fisticuffs?

J: That really must've been awkward as hell, though, right? Like, they're like, sitting there, like, after a whole day, and they're like, "Uh, OK, it's over now."

E: Something tells me they're not going to be doing this again. They're going to learn from this.

S: I don't know.

R: Well, I mean, it's actually not even – like, I wish it had been that exciting. But, instead, it just seems like it was really ''boring'' –

E: Yeah.

R: – and nobody came to ''any'' conclusions. Because you ''can't'', you know?

S: Yeah.

R: You're just having a discussion of, like, well, you know, "But what don't we know?"

=== Italian Earthquake Scientists Convicted (14:57)===
* [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/22/us-italy-earthquake-court-idUSBRE89L13V20121022 Italian scientists convicted over earthquake warning]

S: Now, we're trying to keep – we like to keep our live shows really light –

(''laughter'')

E: So far, so good.

S: So, we thought we'd talk about a horrible earthquake that killed over three hundred people.

E: Yeah, let's go there.

R: Good intro. Good intro there.

S: But there's actually a better story embedded in that. There were six Italian scientists, who were recently convicted of manslaughter –

B: Yeah.

S: – for failure to properly communicate the warnings about the upcoming L'Aquila earthquake in 2009. Yeah, we've been following this story, you know, since it happened. The quick version is that there were a number of small tremors in this very earthquake-prone part of Italy, and the geologists—the local geologists—you know, were following it. And their opinion was that, well, these tremors are very common. Most such tremors are not followed by major quakes. Most major quakes are not preceded by these kinds of tremors. So, the probability of a major quake occurring is not particularly higher, you know, now, just because of these tremors, than at any time, and, therefore, there's no cause for alarm. Now, they were specifically asked during a press conference, "Should we panic?" You know, "Should we evacuate?" And they said "No. There's no reason to evacuate. Stay at home and drink a glass of wine."

B: Steve, was this about a year ago that we covered this?

S: 2009. 2009 –

B: Oh, wow. (''inaudible'')

S: – so, was the quake, and then the court trial started about a year ago, and now the decision came down that the six scientists were convicted to six years – I think six years in prison and something like, you know, millions of dollars in damages for manslaughter—for the deaths of the people who didn't evacuate because they – of their reassurances that there was nothing to be worried about.

R: That's horrific.

J: Well, i, you know, to play devil's advocate real quick, if there was true negligence—like, if they didn't follow through with things that they needed to do, if they did a terrible job at analyzing the data, in a fashion that – where the data could have been analyzed better, or they actually weren't asking their peers for the information—i can understand if there was extreme negligence.

S: Right.

J: But, even still, like, that's very hard to prove, and I just don't understand –

S: Well, I mean, not really. The question is, was their opinion within the standard for their profession? That's—in my opinion—that's the only real question here. You can't be blamed for being wrong, right? You can't be blamed for a bad outcome if you were following the standard. Now, of course, scientists can't predict earthquakes. You can't predict when an earthquake is going to occur. That's the bottom line. What – every statement they said was truthful, you know, every factual statement. "These tremors do not necessarily mean that there's an earthquake coming, and they are not a reason to evacuate. We don't evacuate every city where there's tremors because there might be a major quake, because it's not that predictive." So, that was not negligent. No, and they weren't really being accused of negligence. They were basically being accused of poorly communicating to the public. It seems to be based on a lot of false premises about what scientists ''can know''—what an expert about, you know, an earthquake, a geologist, expert ''can know''.

R: Yeah, they've been convicted for not using a magical power they don't have.

S: Yeah.

R: They might as well have convicted all the psychics in Italy for not accurately predicting this earthquake.

J: I think we need to be careful—i don't disagree, of course. I don't think that these men should be going to jail for this at all—but it is an important thing to state that, I think, people should go to prison, or get in trouble ''legally'', if they are misrepresenting science or – right? So you see where I'm going with this.

S: Well, yeah. If you are –

J: If you're setting that premise—you're saying, "Hey, these guys screwed up, they didn't do what they were supposed to do, they didn't communicate to us the real possible outcomes here", whatever—and, like –

S: Yeah.

J: – I'll reiterate, I don't think that they should be going to jail—

B: Well, I don't agree –

J: —but, I do think, though, that that standard that that court set needs to be applied all the way down the ladder.

B: Yeah, but, Jay, like, someone saying that "I have a cure for cancer and it's scientifically proven" but it's a sham?

J: Exactly, right? So, if they're going to actually take those scientists out and say "You're done. You're not performing science anymore and you're going to jail for that bad decision or information you gave", well, hello! Then, you know, all of a sudden, a million lawsuits need to be filed.

S: But, it wasn't – to clarify, though, it wasn't ''bad'', it was just ''unlucky''. I mean, doctors encounter this all the time, you know. You are asked to decide, you know, what tests to order, what diagnoses a patient might have. There's a whole lot of liability involved with that. You can't be convicted of malpractice just because of a bad outcome if what you did was within the standard of care.

B: Right.

S: So, was the information they were giving to the public within the standard for the profession? If the answer is "yes", the fact that there was a low-probability earthquake the next week is not their fault.

E: Right.

S: It doesn't change the fact – you know, if they're saying there's a 99% chance that there's not going to be an earthquake, and then the 1% thing happens, they were still right –

J: Yeah.

S: – in saying that it was unlikely.

R: Yeah.

E: Didn't the evidence show, basically, that they performed correctly, essentially? They did not –

S: That's the consensus. I mean, so, there's worldwide outrage, especially among the scientific community (''inaudible'') –

B: This has got to be shot down in a higher court.

S: Yeah.

B: This can't – can't possibly stand.

E: I hope so.

S: Well, there's two appeals left. There's two appeals, and they will stay out of prison before those appeals. So, the United States National Academy of Science, the Royal Academy of Science—the Royal Society, rather—issued a joint statement saying that "that is why we must protest the verdict in Italy. If it becomes a precedent in law, it could lead to a situation in which scientists will be afraid to give expert opinion."

J: Yeah, that's devastating.

E: Mm-hmm.

S: So, it would have a chilling effect. What – you know, what geologist is going to, you know, talk to the public in Italy now, if you could wind up in jail and, you know, financially devastated, and your career devastated, because you can't predict the future, you know, because you don't have a crystal ball? It's insane. It's insane.

J: Yeah. To think that they're going after these scientists, and they're not going after the rampant quackery throughout –

S: Well, there's that, too.

E: I wonder how much pressure they came under from, like, the families, the survivors, of this terrible, terrible devastation –

J: Oh yeah, they had to hang someone.

E: – and I imagine they put a lot of pressure on politicians and other people in order to hold ''somebody'' accountable.

J: They have to. They had to send someone down the river for that.

B: Did they have a trial?

S: Yeah.

B: Did they have witnesses and experts coming in?

S: Yeah. Yep.

B: I'd love to know the details of what exactly happened, because how could –

(''laughter'')

S: So, we'll see if the worldwide backlash has an effect. I mean, again, they do have two appeals left, so we'll definitely follow it.

=== Whale Makes Human Sounds (21:35)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20026938 Beluga whale 'makes human-like sounds']

S: All right, Rebecca, so, we have a cute animal –

R: Thank you.

S: – we're going to talk about now.

J: This is a happy one!

R: Just tell me this narwhal or whatever is alive.

S: It's a whale.

E: It's alive and well.

S: It's a beluga whale.

B: It sort of looks like a narwhal.

R: Tell me this beluga is alive!

E: That's NOC the beluga. They're very much alive.

R: It's not a beluga?

E: "NOC". N-O-C.

S: "NOC". NOC the beluga.

R: Oh! "That's NOC."

(''laughter'')

R: I was about to say, "No, ''that is a beluga''."

S: Sounds like a children's song.

E: It does sound like a children's –

S: Evan, sing it.

E: No.

S: OK.

J: Don't change it! Please don't –

E: If my daughter was here, maybe. But, no. So, what's important about NOC the beluga? Well, OK, so, picture this: You are part of the National Marine Mammal Foundation, OK, and you're in the tank, swimming around with the whales and stuff, and, all of a sudden, you hear somebody—you hear a voice—call your name. Something to the effect that – "Get out of the water! Get out of the water!" So, you're in the tank and you come up and you say, "OK, who told me to get out of the water? Who told me to get out of the water?" And the other scientists and people are looking around you like, "Nobody? What the heck are you talking about?" And, he's like, "Well, I definitely ''heard'' that!" Well, what did he actually hear? Well, apparently, NOC the beluga made some noises very reminiscent of human noises. Beluga whales are, you know, incredible creatures. Their calls – They're known as the canaries of the sea. They have a very high-frequency, high-pitched tone to their noises that they make, but they make lots of different kinds of noises. They can emit up to eleven different kinds of sounds—crackles, whistles, trills, squawks—all sorts of things. But, it's been rumored that these whales can emit noises that sound like humans talking. And, for the first time, they've actually recorded NOC the whale making these noises, and they have it on tape. And we have it on tape.

R: Nah.

(''NOC makes unnervingly human-sounding noises'')

R: Did he maybe just swallow a kazoo?

(''laughter'')

J: Everybody has a drunk neighbor that makes those noises.

(''laughter'')

E: Oh, gosh. Who knows what the heck he was saying? You know, dolphins have been taught to mimic noises that kind of sound like human voices, but, before this, there's been no record of an animal ''spontaneously'' coming up and making these kinds of noises. This is the first evidence, the first hard evidence we have of it.

R: Here's – I have a theory. I have a theory. I have a theory that – so, whales, in general, are incredibly intelligent –

E: Oh yeah.

R: – possibly as smart as us, but they don't want thumbs, or any way to talk to us –

E: Or fire.

R: – and I feel like they do, basically – That's true. No, I saw Spongebob once. There was fire under the sea. I think it can be done.

S: Yep, but they don't have nanotechnology, though.

R: They don't. So, my theory is that whales are basically, like – they have – it's like they have locked-in syndrome, you know? Where they're just –

J: Oh, no.

R: – super-intelligent, and there's all these people around them, and they're just messing with them –

J: So, he was screaming, actually –

R: Yeah! And, so, he's been like, his whole life, he's been in this stupid little – like, he's in captivity, right? So, he's been in this stupid little aquarium, and he's just, like, "I hate all of you! And I'm going to will myself to tell you, because you're too stupid to understand!"

E: So, basically, what's going on here is, the whale has learned to change – rapidly change pressure within its naval cavity in order to create these sounds. And, it hasn't – the whale is able to over-inflate what's known as its vestibular sac in its blowhole, which is normally acts to stop water from basically coming in. So, the whale is going through a lot of, you know, effort, essentially, to try to make these noises. And I'm sure they're going to be trying to figure out exactly, you know, basically, ''why'' is the whale doing this?

S: Well, he just – this whale was – did spend his life in captivity –

E: Yeah.

S: – so, he did hear human speech a lot, and maybe he's just, to some extent, mimicking the sounds that he grew up hearing his whole life.

J: It's definitely – it definitely has a human sound to it, in the cadence and everything.

S: Yeah.

J: I mean, he's intelligent enough to mimic a human, which is really cool.

R: Yeah.

J: And, then, you always think, you know, if he can mimic a human—if his brain is advanced that much—you know, maybe he –

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But, is he mimicking humans or making fun of humans? You know, like people make fun of other languages?

R: Yeah, he's just like "Weh! Weh! Weh! This is what you sound like!"

E: Yeah. You stupid bald monkey and (''inaudible'')! Get out of here!

B: Sounds like a false dichotomy.

=== PANDAS Controversy (26:18)===
* [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/a-pandas-story/ A PANDAS Story]

S: So, we're going to talk about – going from talking about beluga whales to talking about PANDAS! Except, we're not talking about pandas, because we're talking about –

E: Wait.

R: Stop toying with my emotions, Steve!

S: I had to put a cute picture of a panda up there for you, Rebecca. We are talking about pediatric autoimmune –

R: It makes sense.

S: – neuropsychiatric disorder associated with –

E: I didn't know PANDA was an acronym. Cool!

R: Steve, I miss the panda.

S: – streptococcal infection—or, PANDAS. See? There's a panda.

(''laughter, cooing'')

E: Aww!

R: Yay.

S: We're talking about PANDAS –

E: Aww.

R: Boo.

J: Oh.

E: That's worse.

S: – which is a legitimately controversial medical diagnosis! So, essentially, what happens is, children suddenly develop ticks—like Tourette syndrome—and psychiatric disorders—obsessive–compulsive disorder—and it is thought that, in some cases, that it is actually – the inciting event is an infection—bacteria—streptococcal infection. Now, of course, it's always difficult to establish the reality of a new disease. Unless you get all your ducks in a row, and all the, you know, pathology all adds up, it's sometimes difficult to identify a legitimate new syndrome and to prove that – cause and effect. So, correlation is one thing. As we know, correlation is not ''necessarily'' causation. And, so, the syndrome exists. There are – the number of physicians who have identified the sudden onset psychiatric – neuropsychiatric disorder, and in some cases it is temporally associated with a streptococcal infection. But that's not the same thing as saying that the strep infection ''caused'' the neuropsychiatric syndrome. So, that's – and there's the controversy. Now, of course, we live in the modern Internet age. So, as soon as a scientist says, "I think that there's this syndrome—I want to call it PANDAS—and – sort of, you know, a psychiatric syndrome provoked by a bacterial infection", of course, there are now support groups, and there's groups on the Internet, and there's patient groups supporting this diagnosis before the science is even settled. And, then, of course, once that happens, when you try to do more science, or have any kind of discussion about whether or not this is a real syndrome, you have parents and patient groups and advocacy groups, you know, calling you all kinds of nasty names and saying there's a conspiracy against people with PANDAS, it's all the insurance companies and Big Pharma and evil doctors or whatever. So, that's the situation that we're in the middle of right now, unfortunately, is that, before the science is settled, you know, there's the scientific controversy, then there's the public controversy. This came to the media attention recently because of a 16-year-old girl called Elizabeth Wray. She developed, you know, a syndrome like PANDAS with ticks and psychological disorders, was diagnosed by a physician with PANDAS, and then was transferred to Boston's Children's Hospital for – presumably for further treatment of PANDAS. Now, the story that is going around the PANDAS community is that once she got to Boston University—or Boston Children's Hospital—she was told – the parents were told, "We don't believe that PANDAS is real – that it exists", and then they essentially admitted their daughter to the psychiatric unit and started treating her with psychiatric medications. Now, I don't know if that's true, because the doctors and the hospital are not telling their side of the story because of patient confidentiality. So, we don't know what their side of the story is. We only know the parents' side of the story, filtered through the PANDAS community. Unfortunately, now there's – this story has taken on a life of its own. There's a Free Elizabeth Wray movement going on within the PANDAS community, they're telling all kinds of horror stories about Boston Children's Hospital, and, you know, we can't verify any of it. What's interesting in reading about it is that each side has their narrative—and I wrote about this on Science-Based Medicine—because one of the things that – the ideas that we're wrestling with in the skeptical community is that—well, all right, we have, I think, a good approach to critical thinking, we understand a lot about self-deception, about the nature of science and pseudoscience—but we don't always have a good story to tell the public, or we have a hard time convincing mainstream outlets that we have – that our story is an interesting and good one. You know, we have to really market our narrative—the skeptical narrative. When you read about stories like this, the PANDAS proponents have a really compelling emotional narrative. It may be total B.S.—i don't know—but it's very compelling. They have a story of a child suffering from an unusual disease, parents who just want to do what's right for her—I believe all those things are correct—and then they are, essentially, being abused by a dismissive and skeptical medical establishment who doesn't believe in this disease, and that is treating their child with perhaps harmful, you know, psychiatric medications. They even – this went to court. Apparently, the hospital thought that the parents were being negligent in not allowing them to give proper standard of care—psychiatric treatment—to their child, and they wanted to have custody taken away from the parents, and they wanted to admit Elizabeth to a locked psychiatric ward—again, not sure – I can't verify those from the hospital's side of things. A judge – a Massachusetts judge essentially made her a ward of the state while they sorted out what was going on, but they did not grant the hospital their request to treat her in the way that they wanted to. So, they essentially just – the state took her out of everybody's hands for a moment – for the moment. So, it's interesting. Of course, the PANDAS community, again, is up in arms, you know. The court essentially took custody away from these parents that are only trying to do what's right for their daughter. But, of course, you could see the other narrative—you know, let's assume that the physicians think that—even if you think – whether or not you think PANDAS really exists—they think that she has a psychiatric illness, the parents are in denial, they're pursuing this false diagnosis, and they're, you know, refusing standard medical care. That's a story, too.

B: What if you just pulled out the whole strep association, and just treat it like a "pandisorder"? Is their beef that it's associated with strep, and they don't think there's any association? Why don't they just treat it like a neuropsychiatric disorder –

S: Yeah.

B: – and forget about the whole strep association?

S: Well, because the strep association would lead you to treat with things like antibiotics. So, that's the question: Should you treat it with antibiotics, or should you treat her like a psychiatric (''inaudible'') patient?

J: Why not both? I mean, why wouldn't you –

S: Well, she has had at least one round of antibiotics. You can also treat it like an autoimmune disease, with, like, intravenous globulin, for example. So, I mean, these are real medical questions. Do we treat it like an infection, do we treat it like a post-infectious auto-immune disease, or do we treat it like a psychiatric disorder? Those are real questions.

J: Steve, are you saying pandas don't exist? Let me just get this straight.

(''laughter'')

S: So, well, I did – to give a serious answer to your sarcastic question, I did –

R: My favorite kind.

S: – take the opportunity – I'm good that way. I'm good that way. I did take the opportunity just to familiarize myself with the PANDAS literature—again, I always emphasize, I'm no an expert in this, but I can read the literature and give my opinion like a science journalist—i think it's genuinely controversial. When I read the research, there's lots of – the ducks are not in a row. So, when you do things like treat kids who apparently have PANDAS with antibiotics in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, they don't necessarily improve. And, if you look for the antibodies that are supposed to be there, they don't necessarily correlate with the disease onset or with the existence of strep. So –

B: So, this is clearly not like autism and vaccines. It's just more complicated than that.

S: So, no. So, right. So, autism and vaccines, like, I would say, that's been studied enough to say that autism's – that autism is not caused by vaccines. We can say that. We can make the negative statement. I cannot make the negative statement that PANDAS does not exist, only that the research so far has not reached the threshold where we can agree that it does exist and that there is some actual negative data—there's some positive data, too—so it's legitimately controversial. It did remind me, though, of the chronic Lyme disease controversy—

R: Yeah.

S: —which is very common in New England—again, where they think that a number of symptoms, including neurological symptoms, can be caused by a bacterial infection and treated with antibiotics. And the same – there's a lot of overlap in those two communities, you know.

J: Steve, are you saying that the public has unrealistic expectations?

S: Well, I think – it's partly that. I mean, I think the public is uncomfortable with the uncertainty, and they like this sort of hero–villain narrative, so they paint the medical community as the villains, and—except for those maverick physicians who understand. They're Lyme-literate, or they understand PANDAS, so they're the heroes—and, then, the insurance companies don't want to pay for, you know, over-and-over recurrent courses of IV antibiotics, so they're the villains, you know. They're not—I'm not defending insurance companies, but sometimes they actually – sometimes they're right. They don't want to pay for things that are not science-based or evidence-based. So, it's complicated. And, you know, how do we – so, how do we deal with a child with this disorder when we don't know what the best scientific answer is—we don't know if it's autoimmune, infectious, or psychiatric? We just have to, you know, do the best we can—and there may be different physicians who would take different approaches—but to portray it as "PANDAS definitely exists. If you don't believe in it, you're dismissive and you're mean and evil, or you're protecting some kind of Big Pharma grant that you're getting"—they always bring that up—rather than saying, "You know, we really want to know the right answer, but we just haven't found it yet. It's still – it's legitimately controversial."

J: Yeah, I think what you're saying does confirm what I was thinking, is that the public wants an answer, science is not yet done figuring this one out, and –

S: Yeah. Like the earthquake one, right?

J: Yeah.

S: Sometimes the answer is, "We don't know yet", you know. "We need to do more research". In medicine, we have to make decisions with imperfect, you know, information, so, you know.

J: Wouldn't it be typical, too – like, let's say that this is happening over and over again –

S: Yeah.

J: – like, at some point, some doctors are going to come up with different ideas, they're going to try it out, you know. The trial-and-error process happens, and—i hate to say it, but—this girl is probably going to be one of the people that gets tested on with new ideas.

S: Well, I mean – well, if you're really testing then you should be doing a research protocol. If you're just applying the best knowledge that we have to an individual patient, that's – a certain amount of trial and error with that that's not really experimentation. So, there is a difference there. So, I don't know. The other interesting question that I'm kind of alluding to is, what role do the patient or the advocacy groups play? I think, a lot of times, that they are helpful in raising awareness for a disease or a disorder and raising funding, and advocating for patients. You know, I've seen, I think, there's a lot of very effective, very good patient advocacy groups out there. But, sometimes, they put their nickel down on a specific scientific answer, and that's not their job.

J: Yeah.

S: It's not their job to predict or demand that science give them the answer they want. And, you know, unfortunately, some people want the answer to be "an infection"—not "genes", not, you know, "We don't know".

J: Yeah. It's curable. That's the one they want.

S: Of course, who – that's the answer I would want to have! "It's something outside that is, you know, foreign, that can be cured, and that can reverse my child to the way that they were". Who – every parent wants that to be the answer, but sometimes you – you know, you have to step back from what you want and listen to the evidence. That's the – that's the scientist's, that's the physician's job, you know. You should just let them do their job, you know.

J: All right, so, I want to bring up a quick side point on this.

S: Yeah.

J: So, as an example, let's say, fifty years ago, let's say this was happening. What stance do you think the public would have differently than what we're seeing today?

S: It's the same, and this ''did'' happen fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, you know, she would be diagnosed with neurosyphilis—maybe not somebody who was sixteen, but that was the stand-in for what we now would, you know, the same subculture would diagnose with chronic Lyme. There were believers in that. There were physicians who believed in treatments like chelation therapy, you know, and science proved it wrong, and they said, "Well, we don't care, we're going to still do it. We're going to come up with – We're just going to keep coming up with special pleading and alternate theories, and form our own societies and our own – and just keep doing it, and say that it's all a conspiracy."

J: Mm-hmm.

S: So, but, I think that it's just the turnaround time is so much faster because of the Internet. Like, another example: CCSVI, right? The alleged blockage in the veins that drained blood from the brain, causing multiple sclerosis. It's that – that whole process—of Dr. Zamboni proposing this entity and a treatment, to it being researched, to it being refuted, to, you know, patient advocacy groups springing up and calling for conspiracies and calling for research and demanding that science give them the answer that they want—all has taken place within a few years. We've seen that cycle happen right before our eyes. So, the Internet is just making it happen a lot quicker and a lot bigger, I think. But it's always been this way.

J: So do you have any ideas on what we could do? Could the skeptical community do anything to help this (''inaudible'')?

S: Well, I think what we do is, we discuss the issue from a science, logical, critical thinking point of view, you know. We point out the role of science in this, and we, I think, we try to bring the public discourse to a level that can deal with it in a more productive way, rather than the conspiracy mongering, sort of lowest-common-denominator that it would otherwise sink to.

J: Yeah.

=== Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44)===
* pnd

== Live Q&A (51:06) ==
* Questions from the CSICon audience

== Science or Fiction (55:19) ==

S: Item number one. A new study finds that astronauts who spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. Item number two. Scientists have discovered the first feathered dinosaur in the western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers. And item number three. Researchers find that, at the molecular level, evolutionary changes can be highly predictable.

== Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:08:11) ==
<blockquote>Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.</blockquote>
J: Paul Kurtz!

{{Outro1}}

== References ==
<references/>

{{Navigation}}

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-06T15:27:54Z

Cornelioid: /* PANDAS Controversy (26:18) */ full segment

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|episodeTitle = SGU Episode 381
|episodeDate = 3rd November 2012 
|episodeIcon = File:KurtzPic2.jpg 
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|notesLink = http://www.theskepticsguide.org/archive/podcastinfo.aspx?mid=1&pid=381
|forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,43845.0.html
|qowText = Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality. 
|qowAuthor = [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] 
|}}

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

== This Day in Skepticism (1:28) ==
November 3, 1957 Sputnik 2 launched

== In Memorium ==
=== Paul Kurtz (3:45) ===
* 1925-2012

S: Well, we are going to start the new segment of the show with an ''in memoriam''. We do like to, on the ''Skeptic's Guide'', pause to remember those members of the skeptical community who have passed, and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] died several days ago, just the day before the organizers were coming down to the conference. He died on Sunday. He was 85 years old. It was 1925 to 2012, so that is 86. I can do math. (''audience laughter'') You'll know why i was confused in a moment.

R: 'Cause you're terrible at math?

S: Yes. So, before we get the show started, Ron Lindsay and Kendrick Frazier talked about Paul Kurtz. You know, he was one of the giants of the skeptical movement, of the skeptical community. You know, he was largely responsible for organizing the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, founding Prometheus Books, CFI, [http://www.secularhumanism.org/ Secular Humanism]. He was an academic, a philosopher. He really gave a lot of weight to the movement early on. He made it to that – he broke it to that next level. It wasn't that, you know, before he came on board. So he has to be remembered for that. We did have some interactions with Paul along the years. The first year that we started – (''audience cooing'')

R: Baby Steve!

E: Aww.

S: I was a little younger back then.

R: He's three years old there.

B: He's only half-grey there.

S: (''laughing'') I'm only half-grey!

E: A little less grey, yep.

S: You can mark my age by my greyness up until about ten years ago, when i went totally grey. Right when we got started, in 1996, you know, CSICOP, now CSI, you know, they were the big national skeptical organization. They'd definitely – They took us under their wing, you know, gave us their support, their local membership list, so that we could get our movement going. And i remember meeting Paul at the first World Skeptics Conference, and he was immediately—like, you know, your grandfather—like, you know, very, very comfortably took on that air of being a mentor. It's like, "Yeah, this is great. You're welcome to the skeptical movement." So i definitely remember him fondly in that way. A few years later, Paul organized a meeting of the local skeptical groups. In the picture here you can see me again with Bob, Perry, and Evan. The four of us came up together –

J: Now, if i remember correctly, Rebecca, you and i were off being badass somewhere else, right?

R: I think that's what was happening, yeah.

S: – and, i think, in the foreground, that's Colonel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Nickell Joe Nickell], isn't it?

E: Colonel.

S: Yeah, he had broke his leg in Spain, or something?

R: Round of applause for Colonel Joe Nickell!

E: I remember that.

(''applause'')

S: Joe actually is going to come up, and he's going to read a poem that he wrote, i believe, about Paul.

JN: Paul was a great supporter of the arts, and i hope he would have liked this. The poem is called "Book of Seasons: An elegy". (''Uncertain re: permission to reproduce poem'')

S: Thank you, Joe.

=== Leon Jaroff (7:34) ===
* 1926-2012

S: This same weekend, Saturday before the show, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_(magazine) Leon Jaroff] also died. ''He'' was 85, hence my confusion. So, Leon Jariff—not a big name in the skeptical community recently, and if you ask, you know, people at conventions like this if they knew who he was – I mean, in fact, right before the show Rebecca said to me, "Who's Leon Jaroff?"

R: (''indignant gasp'')

S: Sorry, Rebecca.

(''audience laughter'')

S: But he was perhaps one of the most skeptical journalists that we have had.

B: Yeah.

S: He was the science columnist for ''Time Magazine''. It was he who said, "You know, popularizing science is important, you know, we should start a science-dedicated magazine." And that was ''Discover Magazine''. That was him. He was not afraid to be a hard-nosed skeptic when writing about scientific issues. So, for example, when writing about chiropractors, [http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,213482,00.html he wrote],

<blockquote>
Chiropractors also employ a bewildering variety of weird practices to diagnose their patients. Some use applied kinesiology, a muscle test that supposedly can diagnose allergies and diseased organs. Hair analysis and iris readings are commonplace in the profession. Even sillier are many of the treatments that chiropractors use and recommend: homeopathic potions, colon irrigation, magnetic therapy, enzyme pills, colored-light therapy, and something called "balancing body energy," among other mystical procedures with undocumented effects.
</blockquote>

S: That's from a mainstream journalist writing in ''Time Magazine''. Do we see this kind of thing today? I don't think so.

B: Nope.

(''audience applause'')

S: So, you know, we do have to, I think, also note the support that Jaroff gave to such a good science journalism, and that kind of hard-nosed, skeptical science journalism is definitely something we miss. That's a void that, I think, that we in the skeptical community have to fill, but, unfortunately, it is a void.

== News Items ==
=== Big Bang Conference at CERN (9:31)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19870036 Big Bang and religion mixed in Cern debate]

S: Rebecca –

R: Yes!

S: – this is a different quote. It's not as good a quote.

<blockquote>
Science in isolation is great for producing stuff, but not so good for producing ideas.
</blockquote>

R: Mm-hmm.

S: Who said that?

R: That was said by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Pinsent Andrew Pinsent] at the Ramsey Center for Science and Religion. What I particularly liked about this quote is that it is completely reversed – it is the exact opposite of what I would have suggested.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I would say that science is actually really good at ideas, but, in order to produce stuff, you have to add something else. You know, like, they might be able to figure out lasers, but to make a CD player you need a marketing executive.

S: Or death ray.

R: Thank you. Yeah, of course. Why didn't I go there first?

(''laughter'')

R: Yeah, so, this quote comes from a recent article that the BBC produced: "Big Bang and religion mixed in CERN debates". Apparently, there was a conference recently that CERN held—you remember CERN, you know, the guys who, apparently, may have found –

J: Higgs!

R: – the Higgs boson.

S: A boson with Higgs-like properties.

R: A Higgs-like thing.

S: Boson, yeah.

R: A Higgish. I like "Higgish" –

B: "Higgish"?

R: – a little bit.

J: (''laughing'') "A little bit!"

S: "Higgy"?

B: (''singing, inaudible'') ''Higgy again."

R: So, yes. Apparently, I don't know the purpose – I don't know what, who dreamt this up, but what I'm thinking is that someone was concerned that they may have found a particle that many people know as the "God particle", and, so, they're concerned that they're going to be excommunicated or, you know, that people will rebel—religious people will rebel—against science. Basically, we'll have some sort of Dark Ages–esque thing happening, and, so, maybe somebody at CERN thought, "Well, we should have this conference where we talk about how religious people should be OK with the Higgs boson."

B: Mm-hmm.

R: So, those are the good intentions that I'm assuming are behind this conference that has speakers such as this. The quotes in here are pretty fun, and none of them have any amount of intelligence to them. Steve, you're the one who brought this one to my attention here –

S: Yes.

R: I'm interested in what – we've talked a little bit before about things like the Templeton Foundation, which is an organization that gives out a prize – gives out prizes to people who can explore science in a religious context, basically. And I'm a bit opposed to it. I feel like it's muddying the waters. I think we don't ''need'' to bring religion into what people are doing at CERN.

S: Mm-hmm.

R: I think those two things are happily separated, but I'm interested in knowing your feelings on this.

S: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think trying to introduce theology into science is misguided. You know, this conference was specifically about the origin of the universe. So, it's not just about scientific issues in particular. I think the thinking, at least on the part of the theologians who were quoted about this conference, is that, well, you're talking about the origin of the universe. That's a really big question, and religion is about answering the really big questions—not science. Science is narrow and reductionist, and makes stuff, but can't really grapple with the big questions of our origins. And that's exactly incorrect, as you were saying. That's a complete knock to science. I mean, science is, in fact, the only human intellectual endeavor that ''can'' answer any empirical question about the origin of the universe.

R: Yeah.

J: So, was the conference, though, the scientists trying to appease religious people? The saying that –

R: Well, you know, apparently, this was – the conference was done on the part of CERN, according to BBC, and that's what I find troubling. I'm totally OK with a conference that religious people host, you know, and the topic might be "How do we –" you know, "How do we consider our theology now that we know ''X'', ''Y'', and ''Z''—now that science has discovered this? What does that mean for ''our'' belief system?" And I think that's fine, but, you know, apparently, the theologians who were there seem to think that this was a chance to ''debate'' the scientists –

J: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

R: – and, no! Why would you do that? Debate is completely the opposite direction of where you want to go.

S: It also – I mean, the quotes seem to me like a desperate grasp at relevance, trying to make it seem like they're – you know, that theology is still relevant to questions about origins of the universe, when, in fact, science has completely displaced it from that endeavor.

J: So, did it end up with, like, a fistfight? Like, what happened?

(''laughter'')

E: Science won.

R: I haven't found any evidence of any arrests, so, apparently –

S: There were no fisticuffs?

J: That really must've been awkward as hell, though, right? Like, they're like, sitting there, like, after a whole day, and they're like, "Uh, OK, it's over now."

E: Something tells me they're not going to be doing this again. They're going to learn from this.

S: I don't know.

R: Well, I mean, it's actually not even – like, I wish it had been that exciting. But, instead, it just seems like it was really ''boring'' –

E: Yeah.

R: – and nobody came to ''any'' conclusions. Because you ''can't'', you know?

S: Yeah.

R: You're just having a discussion of, like, well, you know, "But what don't we know?"

=== Italian Earthquake Scientists Convicted (14:57)===
* [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/22/us-italy-earthquake-court-idUSBRE89L13V20121022 Italian scientists convicted over earthquake warning]

S: Now, we're trying to keep – we like to keep our live shows really light –

(''laughter'')

E: So far, so good.

S: So, we thought we'd talk about a horrible earthquake that killed over three hundred people.

E: Yeah, let's go there.

R: Good intro. Good intro there.

S: But there's actually a better story embedded in that. There were six Italian scientists, who were recently convicted of manslaughter –

B: Yeah.

S: – for failure to properly communicate the warnings about the upcoming L'Aquila earthquake in 2009. Yeah, we've been following this story, you know, since it happened. The quick version is that there were a number of small tremors in this very earthquake-prone part of Italy, and the geologists—the local geologists—you know, were following it. And their opinion was that, well, these tremors are very common. Most such tremors are not followed by major quakes. Most major quakes are not preceded by these kinds of tremors. So, the probability of a major quake occurring is not particularly higher, you know, now, just because of these tremors, than at any time, and, therefore, there's no cause for alarm. Now, they were specifically asked during a press conference, "Should we panic?" You know, "Should we evacuate?" And they said "No. There's no reason to evacuate. Stay at home and drink a glass of wine."

B: Steve, was this about a year ago that we covered this?

S: 2009. 2009 –

B: Oh, wow. (''inaudible'')

S: – so, was the quake, and then the court trial started about a year ago, and now the decision came down that the six scientists were convicted to six years – I think six years in prison and something like, you know, millions of dollars in damages for manslaughter—for the deaths of the people who didn't evacuate because they – of their reassurances that there was nothing to be worried about.

R: That's horrific.

J: Well, i, you know, to play devil's advocate real quick, if there was true negligence—like, if they didn't follow through with things that they needed to do, if they did a terrible job at analyzing the data, in a fashion that – where the data could have been analyzed better, or they actually weren't asking their peers for the information—i can understand if there was extreme negligence.

S: Right.

J: But, even still, like, that's very hard to prove, and I just don't understand –

S: Well, I mean, not really. The question is, was their opinion within the standard for their profession? That's—in my opinion—that's the only real question here. You can't be blamed for being wrong, right? You can't be blamed for a bad outcome if you were following the standard. Now, of course, scientists can't predict earthquakes. You can't predict when an earthquake is going to occur. That's the bottom line. What – every statement they said was truthful, you know, every factual statement. "These tremors do not necessarily mean that there's an earthquake coming, and they are not a reason to evacuate. We don't evacuate every city where there's tremors because there might be a major quake, because it's not that predictive." So, that was not negligent. No, and they weren't really being accused of negligence. They were basically being accused of poorly communicating to the public. It seems to be based on a lot of false premises about what scientists ''can know''—what an expert about, you know, an earthquake, a geologist, expert ''can know''.

R: Yeah, they've been convicted for not using a magical power they don't have.

S: Yeah.

R: They might as well have convicted all the psychics in Italy for not accurately predicting this earthquake.

J: I think we need to be careful—i don't disagree, of course. I don't think that these men should be going to jail for this at all—but it is an important thing to state that, I think, people should go to prison, or get in trouble ''legally'', if they are misrepresenting science or – right? So you see where I'm going with this.

S: Well, yeah. If you are –

J: If you're setting that premise—you're saying, "Hey, these guys screwed up, they didn't do what they were supposed to do, they didn't communicate to us the real possible outcomes here", whatever—and, like –

S: Yeah.

J: – I'll reiterate, I don't think that they should be going to jail—

B: Well, I don't agree –

J: —but, I do think, though, that that standard that that court set needs to be applied all the way down the ladder.

B: Yeah, but, Jay, like, someone saying that "I have a cure for cancer and it's scientifically proven" but it's a sham?

J: Exactly, right? So, if they're going to actually take those scientists out and say "You're done. You're not performing science anymore and you're going to jail for that bad decision or information you gave", well, hello! Then, you know, all of a sudden, a million lawsuits need to be filed.

S: But, it wasn't – to clarify, though, it wasn't ''bad'', it was just ''unlucky''. I mean, doctors encounter this all the time, you know. You are asked to decide, you know, what tests to order, what diagnoses a patient might have. There's a whole lot of liability involved with that. You can't be convicted of malpractice just because of a bad outcome if what you did was within the standard of care.

B: Right.

S: So, was the information they were giving to the public within the standard for the profession? If the answer is "yes", the fact that there was a low-probability earthquake the next week is not their fault.

E: Right.

S: It doesn't change the fact – you know, if they're saying there's a 99% chance that there's not going to be an earthquake, and then the 1% thing happens, they were still right –

J: Yeah.

S: – in saying that it was unlikely.

R: Yeah.

E: Didn't the evidence show, basically, that they performed correctly, essentially? They did not –

S: That's the consensus. I mean, so, there's worldwide outrage, especially among the scientific community (''inaudible'') –

B: This has got to be shot down in a higher court.

S: Yeah.

B: This can't – can't possibly stand.

E: I hope so.

S: Well, there's two appeals left. There's two appeals, and they will stay out of prison before those appeals. So, the United States National Academy of Science, the Royal Academy of Science—the Royal Society, rather—issued a joint statement saying that "that is why we must protest the verdict in Italy. If it becomes a precedent in law, it could lead to a situation in which scientists will be afraid to give expert opinion."

J: Yeah, that's devastating.

E: Mm-hmm.

S: So, it would have a chilling effect. What – you know, what geologist is going to, you know, talk to the public in Italy now, if you could wind up in jail and, you know, financially devastated, and your career devastated, because you can't predict the future, you know, because you don't have a crystal ball? It's insane. It's insane.

J: Yeah. To think that they're going after these scientists, and they're not going after the rampant quackery throughout –

S: Well, there's that, too.

E: I wonder how much pressure they came under from, like, the families, the survivors, of this terrible, terrible devastation –

J: Oh yeah, they had to hang someone.

E: – and I imagine they put a lot of pressure on politicians and other people in order to hold ''somebody'' accountable.

J: They have to. They had to send someone down the river for that.

B: Did they have a trial?

S: Yeah.

B: Did they have witnesses and experts coming in?

S: Yeah. Yep.

B: I'd love to know the details of what exactly happened, because how could –

(''laughter'')

S: So, we'll see if the worldwide backlash has an effect. I mean, again, they do have two appeals left, so we'll definitely follow it.

=== Whale Makes Human Sounds (21:35)===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20026938 Beluga whale 'makes human-like sounds']

S: All right, Rebecca, so, we have a cute animal –

R: Thank you.

S: – we're going to talk about now.

J: This is a happy one!

R: Just tell me this narwhal or whatever is alive.

S: It's a whale.

E: It's alive and well.

S: It's a beluga whale.

B: It sort of looks like a narwhal.

R: Tell me this beluga is alive!

E: That's NOC the beluga. They're very much alive.

R: It's not a beluga?

E: "NOC". N-O-C.

S: "NOC". NOC the beluga.

R: Oh! "That's NOC."

(''laughter'')

R: I was about to say, "No, ''that is a beluga''."

S: Sounds like a children's song.

E: It does sound like a children's –

S: Evan, sing it.

E: No.

S: OK.

J: Don't change it! Please don't –

E: If my daughter was here, maybe. But, no. So, what's important about NOC the beluga? Well, OK, so, picture this: You are part of the National Marine Mammal Foundation, OK, and you're in the tank, swimming around with the whales and stuff, and, all of a sudden, you hear somebody—you hear a voice—call your name. Something to the effect that – "Get out of the water! Get out of the water!" So, you're in the tank and you come up and you say, "OK, who told me to get out of the water? Who told me to get out of the water?" And the other scientists and people are looking around you like, "Nobody? What the heck are you talking about?" And, he's like, "Well, I definitely ''heard'' that!" Well, what did he actually hear? Well, apparently, NOC the beluga made some noises very reminiscent of human noises. Beluga whales are, you know, incredible creatures. Their calls – They're known as the canaries of the sea. They have a very high-frequency, high-pitched tone to their noises that they make, but they make lots of different kinds of noises. They can emit up to eleven different kinds of sounds—crackles, whistles, trills, squawks—all sorts of things. But, it's been rumored that these whales can emit noises that sound like humans talking. And, for the first time, they've actually recorded NOC the whale making these noises, and they have it on tape. And we have it on tape.

R: Nah.

(''NOC makes unnervingly human-sounding noises'')

R: Did he maybe just swallow a kazoo?

(''laughter'')

J: Everybody has a drunk neighbor that makes those noises.

(''laughter'')

E: Oh, gosh. Who knows what the heck he was saying? You know, dolphins have been taught to mimic noises that kind of sound like human voices, but, before this, there's been no record of an animal ''spontaneously'' coming up and making these kinds of noises. This is the first evidence, the first hard evidence we have of it.

R: Here's – I have a theory. I have a theory. I have a theory that – so, whales, in general, are incredibly intelligent –

E: Oh yeah.

R: – possibly as smart as us, but they don't want thumbs, or any way to talk to us –

E: Or fire.

R: – and I feel like they do, basically – That's true. No, I saw Spongebob once. There was fire under the sea. I think it can be done.

S: Yep, but they don't have nanotechnology, though.

R: They don't. So, my theory is that whales are basically, like – they have – it's like they have locked-in syndrome, you know? Where they're just –

J: Oh, no.

R: – super-intelligent, and there's all these people around them, and they're just messing with them –

J: So, he was screaming, actually –

R: Yeah! And, so, he's been like, his whole life, he's been in this stupid little – like, he's in captivity, right? So, he's been in this stupid little aquarium, and he's just, like, "I hate all of you! And I'm going to will myself to tell you, because you're too stupid to understand!"

E: So, basically, what's going on here is, the whale has learned to change – rapidly change pressure within its naval cavity in order to create these sounds. And, it hasn't – the whale is able to over-inflate what's known as its vestibular sac in its blowhole, which is normally acts to stop water from basically coming in. So, the whale is going through a lot of, you know, effort, essentially, to try to make these noises. And I'm sure they're going to be trying to figure out exactly, you know, basically, ''why'' is the whale doing this?

S: Well, he just – this whale was – did spend his life in captivity –

E: Yeah.

S: – so, he did hear human speech a lot, and maybe he's just, to some extent, mimicking the sounds that he grew up hearing his whole life.

J: It's definitely – it definitely has a human sound to it, in the cadence and everything.

S: Yeah.

J: I mean, he's intelligent enough to mimic a human, which is really cool.

R: Yeah.

J: And, then, you always think, you know, if he can mimic a human—if his brain is advanced that much—you know, maybe he –

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But, is he mimicking humans or making fun of humans? You know, like people make fun of other languages?

R: Yeah, he's just like "Weh! Weh! Weh! This is what you sound like!"

E: Yeah. You stupid bald monkey and (''inaudible'')! Get out of here!

B: Sounds like a false dichotomy.

=== PANDAS Controversy (26:18)===
* [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/a-pandas-story/ A PANDAS Story]

S: So, we're going to talk about – going from talking about beluga whales to talking about PANDAS! Except, we're not talking about pandas, because we're talking about –

E: Wait.

R: Stop toying with my emotions, Steve!

S: I had to put a cute picture of a panda up there for you, Rebecca. We are talking about pediatric autoimmune –

R: It makes sense.

S: – neuropsychiatric disorder associated with –

E: I didn't know PANDA was an acronym. Cool!

R: Steve, I miss the panda.

S: – streptococcal infection—or, PANDAS. See? There's a panda.

(''laughter, cooing'')

E: Aww!

R: Yay.

S: We're talking about PANDAS –

E: Aww.

R: Boo.

J: Oh.

E: That's worse.

S: – which is a legitimately controversial medical diagnosis! So, essentially, what happens is, children suddenly develop ticks—like Tourette syndrome—and psychiatric disorders—obsessive–compulsive disorder—and it is thought that, in some cases, that it is actually – the inciting event is an infection—bacteria—streptococcal infection. Now, of course, it's always difficult to establish the reality of a new disease. Unless you get all your ducks in a row, and all the, you know, pathology all adds up, it's sometimes difficult to identify a legitimate new syndrome and to prove that – cause and effect. So, correlation is one thing. As we know, correlation is not ''necessarily'' causation. And, so, the syndrome exists. There are – the number of physicians who have identified the sudden onset psychiatric – neuropsychiatric disorder, and in some cases it is temporally associated with a streptococcal infection. But that's not the same thing as saying that the strep infection ''caused'' the neuropsychiatric syndrome. So, that's – and there's the controversy. Now, of course, we live in the modern Internet age. So, as soon as a scientist says, "I think that there's this syndrome—I want to call it PANDAS—and – sort of, you know, a psychiatric syndrome provoked by a bacterial infection", of course, there are now support groups, and there's groups on the Internet, and there's patient groups supporting this diagnosis before the science is even settled. And, then, of course, once that happens, when you try to do more science, or have any kind of discussion about whether or not this is a real syndrome, you have parents and patient groups and advocacy groups, you know, calling you all kinds of nasty names and saying there's a conspiracy against people with PANDAS, it's all the insurance companies and Big Pharma and evil doctors or whatever. So, that's the situation that we're in the middle of right now, unfortunately, is that, before the science is settled, you know, there's the scientific controversy, then there's the public controversy. This came to the media attention recently because of a 16-year-old girl called Elizabeth Wray. She developed, you know, a syndrome like PANDAS with ticks and psychological disorders, was diagnosed by a physician with PANDAS, and then was transferred to Boston's Children's Hospital for – presumably for further treatment of PANDAS. Now, the story that is going around the PANDAS community is that once she got to Boston University—or Boston Children's Hospital—she was told – the parents were told, "We don't believe that PANDAS is real – that it exists", and then they essentially admitted their daughter to the psychiatric unit and started treating her with psychiatric medications. Now, I don't know if that's true, because the doctors and the hospital are not telling their side of the story because of patient confidentiality. So, we don't know what their side of the story is. We only know the parents' side of the story, filtered through the PANDAS community. Unfortunately, now there's – this story has taken on a life of its own. There's a Free Elizabeth Wray movement going on within the PANDAS community, they're telling all kinds of horror stories about Boston Children's Hospital, and, you know, we can't verify any of it. What's interesting in reading about it is that each side has their narrative—and I wrote about this on Science-Based Medicine—because one of the things that – the ideas that we're wrestling with in the skeptical community is that—well, all right, we have, I think, a good approach to critical thinking, we understand a lot about self-deception, about the nature of science and pseudoscience—but we don't always have a good story to tell the public, or we have a hard time convincing mainstream outlets that we have – that our story is an interesting and good one. You know, we have to really market our narrative—the skeptical narrative. When you read about stories like this, the PANDAS proponents have a really compelling emotional narrative. It may be total B.S.—i don't know—but it's very compelling. They have a story of a child suffering from an unusual disease, parents who just want to do what's right for her—I believe all those things are correct—and then they are, essentially, being abused by a dismissive and skeptical medical establishment who doesn't believe in this disease, and that is treating their child with perhaps harmful, you know, psychiatric medications. They even – this went to court. Apparently, the hospital thought that the parents were being negligent in not allowing them to give proper standard of care—psychiatric treatment—to their child, and they wanted to have custody taken away from the parents, and they wanted to admit Elizabeth to a locked psychiatric ward—again, not sure – I can't verify those from the hospital's side of things. A judge – a Massachusetts judge essentially made her a ward of the state while they sorted out what was going on, but they did not grant the hospital their request to treat her in the way that they wanted to. So, they essentially just – the state took her out of everybody's hands for a moment – for the moment. So, it's interesting. Of course, the PANDAS community, again, is up in arms, you know. The court essentially took custody away from these parents that are only trying to do what's right for their daughter. But, of course, you could see the other narrative—you know, let's assume that the physicians think that—even if you think – whether or not you think PANDAS really exists—they think that she has a psychiatric illness, the parents are in denial, they're pursuing this false diagnosis, and they're, you know, refusing standard medical care. That's a story, too.

B: What if you just pulled out the whole strep association, and just treat it like a "pandisorder"? Is their beef that it's associated with strep, and they don't think there's any association? Why don't they just treat it like a neuropsychiatric disorder –

S: Yeah.

B: – and forget about the whole strep association?

S: Well, because the strep association would lead you to treat with things like antibiotics. So, that's the question: Should you treat it with antibiotics, or should you treat her like a psychiatric (''inaudible'') patient?

J: Why not both? I mean, why wouldn't you –

S: Well, she has had at least one round of antibiotics. You can also treat it like an autoimmune disease, with, like, intravenous globulin, for example. So, I mean, these are real medical questions. Do we treat it like an infection, do we treat it like a post-infectious auto-immune disease, or do we treat it like a psychiatric disorder? Those are real questions.

J: Steve, are you saying pandas don't exist? Let me just get this straight.

(''laughter'')

S: So, well, I did – to give a serious answer to your sarcastic question, I did –

R: My favorite kind.

S: – take the opportunity – I'm good that way. I'm good that way. I did take the opportunity just to familiarize myself with the PANDAS literature—again, I always emphasize, I'm no an expert in this, but I can read the literature and give my opinion like a science journalist—i think it's genuinely controversial. When I read the research, there's lots of – the ducks are not in a row. So, when you do things like treat kids who apparently have PANDAS with antibiotics in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, they don't necessarily improve. And, if you look for the antibodies that are supposed to be there, they don't necessarily correlate with the disease onset or with the existence of strep. So –

B: So, this is clearly not like autism and vaccines. It's just more complicated than that.

S: So, no. So, right. So, autism and vaccines, like, I would say, that's been studied enough to say that autism's – that autism is not caused by vaccines. We can say that. We can make the negative statement. I cannot make the negative statement that PANDAS does not exist, only that the research so far has not reached the threshold where we can agree that it does exist and that there is some actual negative data—there's some positive data, too—so it's legitimately controversial. It did remind me, though, of the chronic Lyme disease controversy—

R: Yeah.

S: —which is very common in New England—again, where they think that a number of symptoms, including neurological symptoms, can be caused by a bacterial infection and treated with antibiotics. And the same – there's a lot of overlap in those two communities, you know.

J: Steve, are you saying that the public has unrealistic expectations?

S: Well, I think – it's partly that. I mean, I think the public is uncomfortable with the uncertainty, and they like this sort of hero–villain narrative, so they paint the medical community as the villains, and—except for those maverick physicians who understand. They're Lyme-literate, or they understand PANDAS, so they're the heroes—and, then, the insurance companies don't want to pay for, you know, over-and-over recurrent courses of IV antibiotics, so they're the villains, you know. They're not—I'm not defending insurance companies, but sometimes they actually – sometimes they're right. They don't want to pay for things that are not science-based or evidence-based. So, it's complicated. And, you know, how do we – so, how do we deal with a child with this disorder when we don't know what the best scientific answer is—we don't know if it's autoimmune, infectious, or psychiatric? We just have to, you know, do the best we can—and there may be different physicians who would take different approaches—but to portray it as "PANDAS definitely exists. If you don't believe in it, you're dismissive and you're mean and evil, or you're protecting some kind of Big Pharma grant that you're getting"—they always bring that up—rather than saying, "You know, we really want to know the right answer, but we just haven't found it yet. It's still – it's legitimately controversial."

J: Yeah, I think what you're saying does confirm what I was thinking, is that the public wants an answer, science is not yet done figuring this one out, and –

S: Yeah. Like the earthquake one, right?

J: Yeah.

S: Sometimes the answer is, "We don't know yet", you know. "We need to do more research". In medicine, we have to make decisions with imperfect, you know, information, so, you know.

J: Wouldn't it be typical, too – like, let's say that this is happening over and over again –

S: Yeah.

J: – like, at some point, some doctors are going to come up with different ideas, they're going to try it out, you know. The trial-and-error process happens, and—i hate to say it, but—this girl is probably going to be one of the people that gets tested on with new ideas.

S: Well, I mean – well, if you're really testing then you should be doing a research protocol. If you're just applying the best knowledge that we have to an individual patient, that's – a certain amount of trial and error with that that's not really experimentation. So, there is a difference there. So, I don't know. The other interesting question that I'm kind of alluding to is, what role do the patient or the advocacy groups play? I think, a lot of times, that they are helpful in raising awareness for a disease or a disorder and raising funding, and advocating for patients. You know, I've seen, I think, there's a lot of very effective, very good patient advocacy groups out there. But, sometimes, they put their nickel down on a specific scientific answer, and that's not their job.

J: Yeah.

S: It's not their job to predict or demand that science give them the answer they want. And, you know, unfortunately, some people want the answer to be "an infection"—not "genes", not, you know, "We don't know".

J: Yeah. It's curable. That's the one they want.

S: Of course, who – that's the answer I would want to have! "It's something outside that is, you know, foreign, that can be cured, and that can reverse my child to the way that they were". Who – every parent wants that to be the answer, but sometimes you – you know, you have to step back from what you want and listen to the evidence. That's the – that's the scientist's, that's the physician's job, you know. You should just let them do their job, you know.

J: All right, so, I want to bring up a quick side point on this.

S: Yeah.

J: So, as an example, let's say, fifty years ago, let's say this was happening. What stance do you think the public would have differently than what we're seeing today?

S: It's the same, and this ''did'' happen fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, you know, she would be diagnosed with neurosyphilis—maybe not somebody who was sixteen, but that was the stand-in for what we now would, you know, the same subculture would diagnose with chronic Lyme. There were believers in that. There were physicians who believed in treatments like chelation therapy, you know, and science proved it wrong, and they said, "Well, we don't care, we're going to still do it. We're going to come up with – We're just going to keep coming up with special pleading and alternate theories, and form our own societies and our own – and just keep doing it, and say that it's all a conspiracy."

J: Mm-hmm.

S: So, but, I think that it's just the turnaround time is so much faster because of the Internet. Like, another example: CCSVI, right? The alleged blockage in the veins that drained blood from the brain, causing multiple sclerosis. It's that – that whole process—of Dr. Zamboni proposing this entity and a treatment, to it being researched, to it being refuted, to, you know, patient advocacy groups springing up and calling for conspiracies and calling for research and demanding that science give them the answer that they want—all has taken place within a few years. We've seen that cycle happen right before our eyes. So, the Internet is just making it happen a lot quicker and a lot bigger, I think. But it's always been this way.

J: So do you have any ideas on what we could do? Could the skeptical community do anything to help this (''inaudible'')?

S: Well, I think what we do is, we discuss the issue from a science, logical, critical thinking point of view, you know. We point out the role of science in this, and we, I think, we try to bring the public discourse to a level that can deal with it in a more productive way, rather than the conspiracy mongering, sort of lowest-common-denominator that it would otherwise sink to.

J: Yeah.

=== Reporting Ghost Stories (39:44)===
* pnd

== Live Q&A (51:06) ==
* Questions from the CSICon audience

== Science or Fiction (55:19) ==

S: Item number one. A new study finds that astronauts who spent more than one month in microgravity have a 35% increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. Item number two. Scientists have discovered the first feathered dinosaur in the western hemisphere, and also adds another dinosaur group known to have feathers. And item number three. Researchers find that, at the molecular level, evolutionary changes can be highly predictable.

== Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:08:11) ==
<blockquote>Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.</blockquote>
J: Paul Kurtz!

{{Outro1}}

== References ==
<references/>

{{Navigation}}

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-06T12:35:58Z

Cornelioid: /* Whale Makes Human Sounds (21:35) */ typo

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-06T12:34:50Z

Cornelioid: /* Whale Makes Human Sounds (21:35) */ full segment

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-06T02:39:17Z

Cornelioid: /* Italian Earthquake Scientists Convicted (14:57) */ full segment

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-05T18:14:41Z

Cornelioid: /* Big Bang Conference at CERN (9:31) */ Capitalized first-person singular subjective pronouns.

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-05T18:12:50Z

Cornelioid: /* Big Bang Conference at CERN (9:31) */ full segment

SGU Episode 381

2012-11-05T12:17:47Z

Cornelioid: /* Leon Jaroff (7:34) */ transcript

SGU Episode 3

2012-11-05T06:20:56Z

Cornelioid: Capitalized first-person singular subjective pronouns.

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|episodeTitle = SGU Episode 3
|episodeDate = 7th June 2005
|episodeIcon = File:Massimo-outdoor.jpg
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|guest1 = M: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massimo_Pigliucci Massimo Pigliucci]
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|notesLink = http://www.theskepticsguide.org/archive/podcastinfo.aspx?mid=1&pid=3
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== Introduction ==

S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. Today is June 7th, 2005. This is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me this week are Perry DeAngelis –

P: Hello, everybody.

S: – and Bob Novella.

B: Good-evening.

S: We have a special guest this week, Massimo Pigliucci, who I will introduce in a moment. But, first, some follow-up from our discussion last week.

== News Items ==
=== Smithsonian ID Fiasco Follow-Up (0:00:32) ===
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/01/AR2005060101986.html The Washington Post: Smithsonian Distances Itself From Controversial Film]

S: Last week we talked about what is now being known as the Smithsonian Institution ID Fiasco. For those of you who listened, the Smithsonian Institution agreed to co-sponsor a film, which was being promoted by the [http://www.discovery.org/ Discovery Institute], which is an intelligent design creationism proponent. The film was called –

P: Shocking lack of judgment.

P: Shocking.

S: A shocking lack of judgment and, we agreed, it was extremely naïve.

P: Yep.

B: And, Steve, they're more than just proponents. I mean, they are the major arm –

S: Yes.

B: – of the movement.

S: That's correct. They exist to promote intelligent design creationism. The film was [http://www.privilegedplanet.com/ ''The Privileged Planet: The Search for Design in the Universe''], or ''Purpose in the Universe''. As in response to the Smithsonian Institution's plan there was a backlash of criticism from the scientific and skeptical communities –

P: Shocked.

S: – and, which has happened in many cases, as we have discussed in the past, when school boards or institutions, you know, fall prey to either creationism or intelligent design, or are being used for this purpose, the blogosphere jumps on it, the cyberspace skeptical and scientific community can react almost instantaneously. Mr. Randall Kremer, who was the public affairs agent for the Smithsonian Institute, was flooded with emails. They were essentially embarrassed out of co-sponsoring the film, which is, you know, a minor victory for skeptical activism.

B: I mean, they should have been embarrassed.

S: They should've been embarrassed. Here, I'm going to read to you the email that I personally sent to Mr. Kremer –

B: – which, I think, just put it over the edge.

S: Yes.

B: That was the, you know, the straw that made them cave.

S: Clearly it was instrumental –

P: No doubt. No doubt.

S: – in this victory—which is, I think, probably representative of the kind of scientific backlash that they received. So here's the email:

<blockquote>Mr. Kremer,

As a scientist and educator I was very dismayed to hear that the prestigious Smithsonian Institution was co-sponsoring the screening of a film promoting the pseudoscience of intelligent design, ''The Privileged Planet: The Search for Purpose in the Universe''. I strongly urge you to reconsider this. The Discovery Institute is a pseudoscientific organization dedicated to promoting religious belief as science. Intelligent design is a thinly-veiled religious belief system designed deliberately to remove any overt religious references from what is otherwise classic creationism. Its purpose is to infiltrate institutions like SI in order to convince the public that it has scientific credentials. Do not be so naïve, as unfortunately others before you have, in thinking that screening this film at SI will not be used by the Discovery Institute and other promoters of ID as scientific authoritative endorsement of ID. In fact, they are already doing so. You have stated that SI policy is such that events of a religious or partisan political nature are not permitted. I would add to that list egregious pseudoscience. Even if you accept the propaganda that ID is not a religious belief, you must acknowledge the consensus opinion of the scientific community that it is simply not science. Do not let SI be exploited to promote an anti-scientific agenda.</blockquote>

P: Hear, hear.

S: And, again, feedback like that, you know, very – within days forced, embarrassed the Smithsonian Institutiton –

P: Must've – he must've got thousands of those.

S: Must've gotten thousands. I hope so. I mean, we and the New England Skeptical Society did our part in spreading the word and encouraging people to write similar emails.

P: And the JREF, with their financial offer –

S: Yeah, well, Randi only $20,000 to SI to ''not'' show the film. They did not accept his offer –

P: Right.

S: – and, in fact, they declined to accept the $16,000 from the Discovery Institute. So they're getting no money.

B: Well, I –

S: They're showing the film anyway.

B: Steve, I don't think they actually declined to accept it. I think they gave it back.

S: Well – yes, fine. The returned it.

P: My understanding was they returned it. They returned it, yeah.

S: They returned the 16,000 and they removed their co-sponsorship of the film, so – The film is still being screened, you know, at a private function in the Smithsonian Institute, but it's not being sponsored, they're not accepting any funds from them, and clearly the imprimatur, the validation, of a prestigious scientific institution like the Smithsonian Institute has been removed from this film and from the Discovery Institute.

P: So it's 90% good. It's not 100%, it's 90%.

S: And I think that they'll be more wary the next time.

P: Right.

S: The real victory here is that this will not happen again. Hopefully.

P: What were they thinking?

S: What were they thinking?

P: Yeah. It's crazy. Crazy.

S: Just incredible.

== Science or Fiction (0:05:09) ==

S: We are going to also introduce a new segment this week, a segment called "Science or Fiction". In this segment, I am going to challenge my panel of skeptics. I have three news items—scientific breakthroughs, scientific news items—from the past week. I'm going to read you a brief summary of each of those items. The trick is that one of these items is not real. One of these items is fiction. The other two are genuine scientific breakthroughs, one is fiction. The challenge for you two this week is to try to decide which one is the fake one.

P: Mere child's play.

S: You have to bring all of your skeptical tools to bear to see if you can sniff out the fake. You can make your comments about each one as I present them, but wait until I've stated all three before you make your guess as to which one is fake. Are you ready?

B: Mm-hmm.

P: Sure.

S: Let's play.

B: Go for it.

S: [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7475-dolphins-teach-their-children-to-use-sponges.html Item number one]: Dolphins have been observed not only using tools, but also teaching tool use to their children. This is the first example of cultural tool use in a non-primate species. That's item number one.

P: Interesting.

S: Item number two: Astronomers have discovered an Earth-like planet orbiting a nearby star, 50 light years from Earth. This is the first Earth-sized planet discovered around another star, and astronomers say there are indications that the planet has an atmosphere. This is the best candidate so far for extraterrestrial life.

P: How far?

S: It's about 50 light years from our system.

P: All right.

S: [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050605183843.htm Item number three]: French scientists have discovered a way to keep water from freezing at hundreds of degrees below zero—near absolute zero. Those are your three items. What are your thoughts?

B: Wow. I've got problems with all of them.

S: I know. That's why they were chosen.

P: (laughter)

B: OK, the dolphins. You said one thing at the end, though, that piqued my interest there. You said that it's the first non-primate species shown to use tools?

S: Right. Well, cultural tool use. In other words, they're – it's not something that's just innate. They're actually teaching this to their children.

B: OK. 'Cause when you said that, I thought of – 'cause I know there are birds that will actually use tools to –

S: There are. And there're some birds that have some problem-solving skills.

B: Right.

S: But this is – they're actually –

B: It's cultural. There's actually a cultural thing.

S: They were observed teaching the tool use, yes.

B: OK, now I – I mean, since, of course, they don't have any hands or opposable thumbs, I assume they're not using their flippers. It would have to be their mouth. So maybe somehow they're using their mouth to manipulate an object they find on the sea floor. I don't think that's – I don't think that's a fact.

P: As for me, I'm gonna say that the first one is the truth. I recently, within the last week, saw a special, I think on the Discovery Channel. You know, it showed dolphins being very sophisticated, particularly a thing that they showed that really struck me was how two males would team up for a long time and keep a female hostage between the two of them. They'd swim around with her, never let her get very far from them –

B: I've heard of that.

P: – for months –

B: Months?

P: – months, they would keep her, so that she would only mate with them.

S: They're smart critters. They're vey smart critters.

B: Wow.

P: She'd try to get away, they'd attack her and really keep her corralled.

B: Now –

P: Anyway, it sounds accurate to me, the first one.

B: The second one has got to be false. We simply are not at the –

P: Yeah, it's too far.

B: No, not actually.

P: To see an atmosphere?

B: Fifty light years is not too far. It's the actual size that can't be right. Earth-sized planets we simply don't have the technology yet to ascertain the – to determine or to find planets that are Earth-sized. Typically, the only things we find are bigger than actually Jupiter –

P: Yeah.

B: – so we're talking thousands and thousands of times bigger than the Earth.

P: He went beyond that, too, Bob. He said that they had evidence that there was an atmosphere on it. How the heck –

B: Well, that's possible. I mean, you could – I think –

P: Not that size.

B: Well, using something –

S: All it requires is spectroscopic analysis –

B: Right.

S: – of the light coming from the atmosphere.

B: Spectroscopy would tell you if there were certain elements in the atmosphere. That's not what concerns me. It's the size, and that's just too small. We haven't – we're not close to detecting Earth-sized yet.

P: That one sounds false to me.

B: We will get there, though. We'll get there, but we're not there yet. Now, that – it doesn't matter what technique they're using. They could be using, you know, the gravitational disturbance of the parent star caused by the planet.

P: Wobbling.

B: Still, Earth-sized planets are just too small to create a nudge that's detectable yet.

S: Interesting.

P: Now, the last one, about the water. I mean, it's impressive –

B: Let me make one more comment about the second one. The other technique is actually—and it was recently perfected. They've actually – they claim to have discovered a planet that was the first planet discovered purely from the reflected light of the parent star, which was quite an achievement. But, still, that was a huge planet, a huge amount of light, relatively speaking.

S: So you don't think we're ready for this breakthrough yet.

B: No, not yet. We will definitely get there, and maybe relatively soon. Maybe, you know, maybe ten years, six years, but I've heard nothing approaching Earth-sized yet. And, the third one. Perry, did you want to comment on the water?

P: I was simply saying that it's impressive, but it simply seems more reasonable. Not precisely sure how you'd go about doing it.

S: Even though they were French scientists?

(laughter)

P: Yeah, well, we're suspending our disbelief for the moment.

B: At what temperature did you say, Steve? You mentioned near absolute zero.

P: Hundreds of degrees below zero.

S: Single digits.

B: Single degrees near absolute zero?

S: Yeah. Eight degrees was, I think, the figure given.

P: That's crazy.

B: That's – now that's liquid? Liquid water? I don't – no, I don't see that happening. No.

P: You gotta choose between the two of them.

B: I know. That's just too damn cold. I mean, even, you know, moving water can get colder than 32 by the fact that it's moving, will lower the freezing temperature a little bit, but to that degree? Maybe there's some sort of state that can get water into that makes it somewhat immune to freezing, but I can't imagine what that might be. Let's see. What – how could they – what could they possibly do to liquid water to maintain that state?

P: I have – I don't know.

B: – even that close –

P: Move it at an incredibly high speed?

S: So it's time to cast your votes.

B: OK. By definition –

P: Yeah, I'm still – I still think number two is less reasonable.

S: Perry votes for number two, the Earth-sized planet around another star. Bob?

B: Is what, true? Science or fiction?

S: As the fake one. As the fiction.

P: As the fiction. I'm writing that down as –

B: Now, there's two fiction. Aren't there two fiction?

S: No, there's one fiction. There's two are real.

P: Right. I believe that number two is fiction.

B: I could have sworn you said one real, two fiction.

P: Come on, Bob.

S: Two are science, one is fiction.

P: These rules are not complicated, Bob.

B: OK. Then, well, it's gotta be two. Two is definitely fiction.

S: So you both cast your vote for two.

P: Correct.

B: Too small.

S: OK. Well, you are both good skeptics. You got the correct answer.

P: (''inaudible'') we are!

S: You did very well.

P: Now, how did the scientist do that with the water?

B: I'm dying to know.

S: Well, we'll take them in order. Let's take them in order.

P: We'll take them in order.

S: A group of dolphins living off the coast of Australia teach their offspring to use their snouts with sponges while foraging for food in the sea floor. So, they actually put sponges on their noses to protect their – to protect them while foraging on the sea floor.

B: How do they do this?

S: Then they caught – They stick it on there. And then they caught mothers teaching this to their children.

P: Wow. Wow.

B: That's fascinating. So if they get, like, a –

S: You were right. Your intuition was right. It was something – they use their snout, not their flippers.

P: Smart critters.

B: Absolutely. So, if they get, like, a red sponge and stick it to their nose, they look kind of like clownfish? Is that how it works?

P: Bob.

S: I guess so.

P: Badum-bum.

S: This is by Krützen and colleagues. They analyzed thirteen, what they're calling "spongers", and 172 non-spongers, and concluded that the practice seems to be passed along family lines, primarily from mothers to daughters, for some reason.

B: That's very believable. I mean, they're just so intelligent. It seems –

P: Women do most of the work in the animal kingdom. That's why.

B: It seems very likely that they improvised some sort of tool use with their snouts. OK. Makes sense.

S: You're absolutely right with number two. I think that that is eventually going to be a headline –

P: Right.

S: – but it's just a few years too early.

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But Bob is just too up-to-date on the planet-hunting state of the art.

P: Hey, hey! I guessed it, too.

S: You did! But Bob had the details. It's true. You both sniffed that one out.

P: Thank you.

B: Water me! Come on, tell me, what's the (''inaudible'') do this?

S: OK. Here's the headline. You're gonna love it. "Nanotube water doesn't freeze, even at hundreds of degrees below zero."

B: Wow.

S: So, what French scientists have done is, they've – they are using the carbon nanotubes as a template, and the water molecules filling these tubes take on a similar structure, where the hydrogen and oxygen atoms form a lattice-like bond, and they – it will not freeze. It will continue to flow through this tube, even down to near-absolute temperatures.

B: That's fascinating.

P: Hum.

B: My god. It changes the molecular arrangement of the water?

S: Yeah, it actually changes the molecular arrangement of the water.

B: But can you still consider it liquid water, though?

S: You know, it's – that's a good question. I didn't say it remained a liquid. I said it didn't freeze.

B: A-ha! OK.

P: It's true.

S: It may actually be another state of water.

B: That makes more sense.

S: It may not technically be the same state as, you know, normal liquid water.

P: Sort of plasmic?

S: It's not a plasma.

B: No.

S: I mean, it's a new – and I don't know if they're actually going to call it a new ''phase'', but it definitely is a new ''state'' that water is in. And it is more like liquid than like ice. It certainly does not form ice crystals. It stays in this lattice formation and does not, you know, freeze into the normal crystalline structure that water ice has.

B: Yeah. It definitely doesn't sound like any of the other states of matter could account for that. I mean, you couldn't – it doesn't sound liquid to me, it doesn't sound – maybe it's a different type of solid. It's definitely not the other types, like plasma that Perry mentioned, or some of the more exotic ones, the Bose–Einstein condensates and the fermionic condensates. It can't be that, either. So, maybe it's a new type of solid for water. OK.

P: Interesting as heck.

S: Very interesting. It remains to be seen what the applications of this would be, but these nanotubes technology is, you know, very, very new and very, very active area of research, and this is just one example.

B: The applications are – appear to be just utterly mind-boggling for these nanotubes. I've never seen a discovery take off in quite the way that nanotubes has. I mean, just from the get-go, you know, the interest was worldwide, and since then they've found potential applications from computing to fibers to, maybe—to all sorts of applications—electronics. It's amazing how versatile this material appears to be. I think we'll be hearing a lot about nanotubes.

S: Very interesting. Well, it is now time to bring on our guest.

== Interview with Massimo Pigliucci (0:16:22) ==
[http://rationallyspeaking.org/ Dr. Pigliucci’s website]

S: With us this week is Dr. Massimo Pigliucci, who we simply call our friend (booming voice) Massimo.

P: (laughs)

S: Massimo is Associate Professor of Evolutionary Biology at SUNY Stony Brook in Long Island. He has published over 70 technical papers in evolution and botany. He's written seven books. His most recent non-technical book is ''Denying Evolution''. He's the author of a column in ''Skeptical Inquirer'' magazine called "Thinking About Science", and he's a frequent contributor not only to ''Skeptical Inquirer'' but also ''Skeptic'', ''Free Inquiry'', ''Philosophy Now'', and ''Philosopher's Magazine''. He has a doctorate in genetics from the University of Ferrarra in Italy, a PhD in botany from the University of Connecticut, and a PhD in philosophy from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, Massimo.

M: Thank you for having me. That list always sounds a little bit embarrassing.

(laughter)

S: Yeah, it always is embarrassing to hear somebody else read your own CV.

B: I wish I had such a list.

P: It's daunting, yes.

S: Thank you for being on our show this week. We appreciate it.

M: My pleasure.

S: So, I'm sure you've been following, in the news over the last few weeks, the recent activity of the – our friends, the intelligent design crew –

M: Yes, indeed.

S: – in Kansas City with the – We just got through talking about the Smithsonian Institute debacle –

M: Right.

S: – which, if you hadn't heard, they backed off from cosponsoring the Discovery Institute film.

M: Right. See, sometimes it works.

S: Sometimes it does work. Sometimes it does work.

P: Amen.

S: And, hopefully, people, you know, like the director of the Smithsonian, will think twice before, you know, falling for the Discovery Institute's coy offers in the future. So, what have you been doing recently, in terms of investigating or writing about the intelligent design crew?

M: Well, one thing that I've ''not'' been doing is to go to Kansas for those [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_evolution_hearings scam hearings that they organized with the local Board of Education].

S: Were you invited?

M: Yes, I was actually invited, and I followed the advice of Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education, more or less politely responding that I was – it wouldn't be a good idea for any scientists to participate.

P: So, Massimo, you agree with the basic, what I've been reading, then, in that the scientific community is really refraining from speaking at those hearings? You agree with that?

M: Right. I agree, and that's actually a change of heart for me, because in the past I've been involved in direct debates with creationists, intelligent design proponents, and so on and so forth. Now, under certain circumstances, those debates are actually fun, I guess, and may have a purpose, depending on the venue and the format and so on. But, definitely, in front of a school board, it's not – it doesn't seem like a good idea, because it really, in that case, does provide the other side with some legitimacy that they, frankly, don't deserve.

S: But do you – critics have said – critics of the decision of Eugenie Scott, and you, obviously, and of scientists that she advised, to boycott those hearings, have said that they already have legitimacy by the mere fact that they're before a school board, and then, therefore, shouldn't the mainstream scientific position be represented? What do you say about that?

M: Well, it depends on – I think, when we're talking about legitimacy, it depends on who bestows the legitimacy. It seems to me that one thing is to be invited by a school board, who as we know, is elected, and doesn't necessarily have much of an effect on either science, or education for that matter. Another thing is to be, on the other hand, given some credence from a professional biologist or a professional scientist, and that's what, I guess, we wanted to avoid in this case. Incidentally, the message was, in no uncertain terms, directed mostly to the school board. In other words, we told them that this was not an acceptable way of deciding these sort of matters.

S: Do you think that strategy worked?

M: I think it worked better than the alternative in this particular case. We'll see, of course, what the final outcome of the Kansas equation is.

P: Right.

M: Apparently, in Kansas, there is never a final outcome.

S: Right.

M: They can change their mind every other year.

P: It's true.

S: We thought it was interesting, the other – the unique or new aspect of this case was that the school board's decision, what they've said so far—now, they haven't rendered a final decision—went beyond just the creation–evolution issue to actually redefining science.

M: Which is, of course – right. Which is, of course, what the intelligent design side actually wants. Beginning with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_E._Johnson Phillip Johnson]'s early books, and certainly now with their chief intellectual [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A._Dembski Bill Dembski], what they want is, in fact, to redefine science. And that's an interesting point, which, I guess, we should spend a couple of minutes on. I have often said –i've debated Bill Dembski a couple of times, and we have exchanged opinions in writings as well, and here is Dembski's position, which sounds very reasonable, and I think it's one of the reasons it's so appealing to, sort of, people who don't have much of a philosophical background, even some scientists. His position is the following: He says, look, it used to be that anything – different kinds of potential causes for events were allowed as possible explanations, since the time of Aristotle—Aristotle included final causes, of course, to which intelligent design will belong—as acceptable kind of answers when one wonders about what's going on in the universe. And, then, Dembski says, Bacon came on—the British philosopher—came on the scene in the sixteenth century and decided, more or less arbitrarily, that final causes were out, that science was only a matter of ''how'' and not of ''why'', and, ever since, according to Dembski, science has been impoverished, and it's time to bring things back, essentially, to the wholeness of the Aristotelian approach. Now, that sounds very interesting, except that there are a couple of things that don't work. First of all, Aristotle never used final causes in a way that Bill Dembski will like to begin with.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: But that's a minor point. The major point is this: There was a very good reason why Bacon did – suggested what he suggested, which was, you realize that science wasn't going to get off the ground while it was still messing around with supernatural explanations. If one always had the supernatural card to play, any time that one was sort of running out of options, then science would simply never really be able to make progress in understanding the natural world.

S: Right.

M: So, that's why he said that those kinds of answers are out. Now, that worked very well for about a couple of centuries, especially in physics—Galileo, Newton, and so on. Then, Darwin came to play, and the game changed again, because, in fact, Darwin did contribute what—Dembski maintains—Darwin did reintroduce final causes in science, in biology. The question of why things happen is a fundamental question in evolutionary biology, and it is a perfectly fair question, which is pursued by biologists since Darwin. It's just that we answer in a different way. When we ask, "Why is the eye structured the way it is?", the answer is "Because natural selection favored certain variations on that structure, which worked better for the purpose of visualizing objects, and so on and so forth. In other words, there is a role for "why" questions in biology. It's just that the answer is grammatically different from the one that intelligent design proponents would want to see in – consider as questions in science.

S: Right. "Why" questions are essentially mechanism. "What is the mechanism of this phenomenon?"

M: The long-term mechanisms. So, the distinction here in biology is particularly clear, between "how" questions and "why" questions. So, I can ask those questions, for example, again, about the eye, and if I ask "How does it work?", then what I mean is, "What are the molecular, et cetera, mechanisms that allow the image to be – you know, the light to be captured, the image to be formed and to be sent to the brain, and so on and so forth?" But if I ask, "Why is the eye there to begin with?", then the answer is—regardless of specific mechanisms—the answer is, "Because there is an advantage for certain living organisms to be able to see what – you know, to perceive and understand their surroundings in terms of light waves.

S: Right. So, evolution is the ultimate "why" answer in – for biology, for biological "why" questions.

M: That's right.

S: Dembski and his crowd would like to reintroduce—essentially take us back before Darwin, before Galileo, before Bacon, even—and to reintroduce supernatural or divine causes into scientific questions. What they say is that by not allowing them we're essentially rigging the game against those types of answers.

M: Right.

S: What's your response to that?

M: Well, my response is that – suppose—i actually asked this question to Dembski at one point, at a meeting at the New York Academy of Sciences a couple of years ago—and the question is, OK, well, suppose, for a moment, that, in fact, we do allow intelligent design, in the sense that Dembski means, back into science. So suppose that I'm going to be, all of a sudden, the director of the National Science Foundation, and I decide to give, you know, three million dollars, over a period of five years, to Dembski—which is a pretty good grant by NSF standards—and I ask him, "What would you do? What sort of experiments would you set up? What sort of empirical hypotheses would you be able to test?" And he had no answer.

P: It's a good question.

M: Yeah! He had no answer.

S: Of course he has no answer. Yeah.

M: So, that is why, I think – so, I guess, to go back to your question, there are two different kinds of answers to "Why is it that the supernatural is out by definition?", essentially. One is the pragmatic one, the one that I just provided. You know, from the point of view of practical scientists, I want to see, you know, the proof is in the pudding. What is he going to do? Suppose that I do give you the money. What sort of hypotheses can you test? And, of course, the answer, again, is "None.", because, by definition, of course, the supernatural agent can do whatever the heck he wants –

S: Right.

M: – and, so, there's no way to predict, and therefore to test, what he's going to do. The other answer is, I think, a little deeper, and that's the philosophical answer—and, as you know, most scientists are not particularly well-versed in philosophy—but the philosophical answer is this: It is a matter of principle, once that you invoke the supernatural, you will not be able to propose empirically testable hypotheses. In other words, it's not just a matter of Bill Dembski's limited imagination, or anybody else's limited imagination, that at the moment we can't think of one, but give me enough time and I'll come up with one. A philosopher would argue that, as a matter of principle, if you abandon the position of methodological naturalism in science, you're dead. You're not doing science anymore. You're maybe doing something else—you might be doing theology, you might be doing some sort of philosophy—but you're certainly not doing science. And it is that difference, of course, between philosophical and methodological naturalism, that is very important, is apparently a little subtle for most people –

S: Right.

M: – but it's very important in terms of this debate.

S: Right, and they either don't get it or don't want to get it.

M: Right. (laughs) I do have the suspicion sometimes that they don't want to get it.

S: They don't want to get it. Because, you know, how many times can you explain it to them –

M: Right.

S: – and to really not understand it, you know, stretches the imagination.

M: Right. I mean, I can see how some people with no background in either science or philosophy might be a little puzzled by this difference, which, by the way, we should probably explain, but somebody like Bill Dembski, who does, actually, in fact, have a degree in philosophy, it's hard to believe that he doesn't understand the implications of that distinction.

S: Right, and I've had the same experience as you. If you remember, we were together at the [http://business.highbeam.com/5799/article-1G1-91236216/fourth-world-skeptics-conference-burbank-lively-foment World Skeptics Conference] a couple of years ago –

M: Yeah.

S: – and I had the opportunity to ask, I think it was Nelson –

M: Mm-hmm.

S: – a similar kind of question –

M: Yeah, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Nelson_(creationist) Paul Nelson].

S: – and what he said was that, you know, you cannot question the mind of god. If I say – which means, as you just said, any hypothesis about intelligent design—about the intelligent designer—that you could seek to test or falsify is rendered unfalsifiable by that statement –

M: Right.

S: – because you can't ask the question, "What would, or what should, the world look like if it were designed by an intelligent designer?", because there's no answer to that question. The answer is, "It looks like whatever it looks like." –

M: Right.

S: – and, therefore, it's not falsifiable, and, therefore, not science.

M: Correct. There is –

B: But couldn't –

S: You know they have to understand that.

M: Right. There is a caveat there—which, of course, is something that Dembski either as a matter of – either on purpose or because he really doesn't see the difference, he insists on this point—he says, "But, look: There's plenty of good science that is done under the assumption of intelligent design." He talks about forensic science, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and so on and so forth. And, of course, he's right: That kind of science—archeology, for example—''is'' done under the presumption of intelligent design. But, in those cases, you can, in fact, question the mind of the designer.

S: Right.

M: In fact, the whole point is that you do know, or at least make hypotheses about –

B: Excellent.

M: – what the designer is doing and why –

S: Right.

M: If you couldn't do that, then there would be no archeology, no SETI –

S: Right,

M: – and no forensic science.

S: Exactly.

P: Exactly.

B: That's a good point.

M: And, so, ''intelligent design'' is a little too broad of a term in –

S: So it's a false analogy on their part.

M: That's right. Exactly. It is.

S: I've always – it's always struck me, too, that it's one enormous logical fallacy. Now, we keep track of logical fallacies on the show. We actually have our [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/resources/logicalfallacies.aspx top 20 list of logical fallacies] –

M: (laugter)

S: – which you can read on our website. It's at [http://www.theness.com/ theness.com]. There's a couple that they're using here. One, of course, is the argument from ignorance: "We don't know something, therefore god did it."

M: Right.

S: And we – specifically, in this type of explanation, you can also call that the "god of the gaps" argument.

M: Right.

S: But it's also confusing ''currently unexplained'' with ''unexplainable''. Again, that's sort of, "The current gap of knowledge, that's what god did."

M: Right.

S: And, as that gap retreats, and the ever-advancing, you know, knowledge of science, god still fills whatever gaps and crevices are currently unexplained as if they never will be explained –

M: Right.

S: – even though, tomorrow, they ''are'' explained.

M: I would make, also, an even third-level distinction. That is, there are two kinds of unexplainable questions or phenomena.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: There is the impossibility to explain something because, in fact, there is, essentially, no explanation within the realm of natural laws—which is the sort of unexplainable phenomenon that Dembski likes—but there is also what philosophers call ''epistemic unexplainability''. There may be some things out there that are explainable in the sense that there ''is'' an answer somewhere, but, because of the limitations, both current and for possibly future human understanding and human reason, we might never be able to get the answer.

S: Right.

M: So, one possible –

B: It's like a dog –

M: Yes.

B: It's like a dog trying to understand calculus.

M: That's right. Exactly.

B: It's never going to happen.

M: And there are some interesting possible examples within science. So, for example, the question of the origin of life ''may'' fall into that category—not because the origin of life is unexplainable in principle—i don't think it is—and, of course, we ''may'' explain it. I mean, you know, next week, we may see an article in ''Science'' or ''Nature'', somebody has actually come up with the right answer. But it may also be the sort of thing that is epistemically unexplainable by human beings simply because there's very, if any, clues left, essentially. You know, something that happened four billion years ago. There are no fossils. We have very little understanding, or way to get decent information, about what the conditions actually were. So we might never be able to answer that question. But that—even that, even granting that—it still doesn't bring you any closer to the necessity of a supernatural explanation.

S: Right, right. Once again, we are speaking to Massimo Pigliucci, philosopher and evolutionary scientist, and author of many articles and books. We've been talking about the intelligent design phenomenon and proponents of intelligent design, which brings us, really, to the philosophical underpinnings of science itself—What is the difference between science and religion, philosophically?—and we've brought up some terms like "philosophical naturalism"—our organization, for example, advocates what I would call "scientific skepticism"—and there are some subtle differences between these types of philosophies. You've written several reviews and articles, for example, criticizing [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould Stephen Jay Gould]'s summary, or summation –

M: Right.

S: – of the relationship between science and religion.

M: Right.

S: Gould came up with this idea of "non-overlapping magesteria", in which both science and religion occupy different –

B: Domains of knowledge.

S: – intellectual domains—right, different domains of knowledge he calls "magesteria"—and they each serve their purpose. You're very – you have been very critical of this idea.

M: Well, for plenty of reasons. I mean, there's not – I should probably start out by saying that I am not a Gould-hater like some of my colleagues. I really like some of the stuff that Stephen Gould wrote, both technical and non-technical, and I really dislike some of the other stuff. In particular, about religion, there are a couple of things that really, I think, are worth considering in that context. First of all, Gould did not come up with the basic idea that you mention, although he did come up with the fancy name, but that idea goes back, essentially, all the way to St. Augustine.

S: Yes, and he acknowledges that, to be fair, yeah.

M: Right. Now, the basic idea, however, is, I think, a bit misleading, for two reasons: Number one, because it hinges on the definition of "god", which Gould leaves kind of up in the air for most of that book. At one point, he finally has to come to terms with the fact that, well, in fact, there are some conceptions of god that do go head-on against science. For example, if you are a Young Earth Creationist who believes that there was a worldwide flood four thousand years old – ago, then, I'm sorry, science just tells you you're wrong. And, if your belief in god hinges on that particular belief then you're dead in the water. So even Gould had to acknowledge that it really depends on what you mean by "god" and what particular version of "god" you're espousing, which is, of course, very different from the question of science. There are no different varieties of science that we're talking about here. It's either you're – you know, scientists disagree on specific theories, but there is, essentially, one body of methods and knowledge that we call "science". On the other hand, religion is an incredibly heterogeneous body of beliefs. So, one has to, at least, to be clear on what one means, because it sounds very nice, it sounds very ecumenical, to say, "Well, science and religion can be different areas of expertise, and let's just keep them separate." Well, it depends. But even within the kind of religion that does not have any direct conflict with science—So, suppose you're, you know, a progressive Catholic. You know, the Pope. The previous Pope, John Paul II, as we know, did acknowledge that the Catholic Church does not have much of a problem—have a problem at all—with the modern theory of – biological theory of evolution.

S: Right.

M: OK. Well, that sounds very good. That still does not amount to say that there's no overlap at all between the two areas of intellectual endeavor. For one thing, because part of science is now getting, actually, to the point of providing explanations, at least tentative explanations, for where religious beliefs and morality come from to begin with.

P: Mm-hmm.

M: Now, I'm not a particular defender of evolutionary psychology, either, but the ideas are out there. And the fact that the ideas are out there means that science is, in fact, beginning to encroach in the area – on the area of morality, and religious beliefs, and so on and so forth. Should we kick it out, just because we feel uncomfortable about it, or because some people feel uncomfortable about it? I don't think so. That's not to say that current ideas about evolution are more likely or necessarily correct, but it's just that it is worth exploring as a possibility.

S: Right.

M: And, lastly, there – the last thing that really, I guess, prompted my disagreement with Gould, is that he seems to somehow have forgotten that there is a whole different area of human knowledge, or human intellectual endeavor, that greatly overlaps, and often contradicts, some religious positions, and that's, of course, philosophy—particularly moral philosophy. So, to say, as he says in that book, that morality is the province of religion—well, wait a minute. Actually, morality is the province of a lot of different kinds of activities—as I said a minute ago, even possibly science—but certainly not ''only'' religion. So, in other words, the situation, it seems to me, is a lot more complicated than the nice and, you know, neat distinction that Gould was trying to make.

S: Yeah, I agree. He did see – he did go out of his way to sort of overstate the historical non-overlapping of science and religion, and it struck me that you have to sort of, you know, turn a blind eye to all of the cases of – you know, religion, essentially, completely dominated science, was ''the'' explanation for the natural world, and has had to retreat territory, if you will, to scientific explanations and the institution of science. But, do you think you could, you know, rescue a legitimate point from Gould's position by saying that what he's describing is not the historical relationship between science and religion but what the relationship should be—in other words, that religion ''should'' avoid overlapping with science and ''should'' restrict itself to the domains of morality and to the great unanswerable questions of existence that are inherently not explainable or not explorable by scientific methods? What would you say to that?

M: I think that is a fair point. However, the question then can also be asked the other way around: Should science be restricted from inquiries into morality and religious beliefs and so on?

S: Well, you could – as we were saying with the intelligent design thing, there are some questions that are simply outside the realm of science –

M: Right.

S: – and you can argue that, well, if, once you're outside the realm of science by, you know, methodological naturalism, then, you know, that is the domain of faith. You're free to have any arbitrary belief or faith that you choose, because these are questions that are inherently outside of the scientific realm. For example, you may – some people believe that the question of whether or not god exists—or any power or entity or ''thing'' that is outside of the natural laws of the universe, not bound by nature, if you will—that that's an inherently unanswerable question by science and therefore is in the realm of faith.

M: Right.

S: Would you agree with that non-overlapping aspect?

M: Right. Yes, I would agree with that nonoverlapping – I'm afraid, however, that that would leave very little outside, in fact, of the realm of science, and I'm perfectly happy – if people are happy with that conclusion –

S: Yes.

M: – I'm fine to go along with it. But the kind of questions—the kind of encroaching of science into the territory of religion and morality that I was referring to—does not deal directly with the question of the existence of god—which, you're right, it's by definition outside the realm of science. But there are other things that are close enough to really bother a lot of religious believers that science is now beginning to encroach upon.

S: Right.

M: So, suppose that we do come up, eventually, with a very reasonable, very serious theory of how morality—a sense of morality, at least, and even possibly some certain specific moral rules—evolved by natural selection among primates and (''inaudible'') you know, groups or societies.

S: Right.

M: Well, you know, is that encroaching on religion, or not?

S: Well, this is what I would say to this—and this is – I've certainly heard humanists and others take this approach—that science deals with statements of fact—what is the state of history, the state of nature—whereas morality deals with statements of value. So, whenever you have to make a value judgment, that is a question that can be informed—factually informed—by science, but cannot be made scientifically.

M: Mm-hmm.

S: So, that is a very practical and real place to draw the line—again, to map out these domains.

M: Right. So, what you're referring to is what, in philosophy, is known as the naturalistic fallacy, which was discussed originally by David Hume. The idea was, in fact, that you cannot go from what ''is'' to what ''ought to be'' –

S: Right.

M: – from a matter of fact to a matter of value. OK. Now, I have actually taken that position myself in the past and, quite frankly, at this moment I keep vesseling back and forth.

S: Right.

M: So, don't necessarily hold me to what I'm about to say in a few months, because I may change my mind again. But, there is some interesting situations here that need to be discussed. So, while I will certainly grant that there are – there is a large area of specific moral decisions that are very far from anything that science can say at the moment, there are some particular moral values—particular moral rules—that seem to be, in fact, fairly straightforwardly explainable by science. For example, there is a whole area now in philosophy of ethics and philosophy of morality that looks at the use of optimality models—game theoretical models—to predict what sort of behavior would be optimal in a group of individuals, given certain constraints. This is a sort of mathematical modeling that has been done in evolutionary biology for a long time, but until recently, it has not been applied, in fact, directly to questions of human morality. Well, it turns out that when people have—in the last three or four years, there've been a series of papers in major science magazines—when people have, in fact, applied that kind of game-theoretical approach to realistic situations and have actually tested their predictions, with actual real human beings, the funny thing that turned out is that the models were able to predict, very closely, what real human beings would consider – how they would act and what they would consider moral or nonmoral. That raises the question that some kinds of human behavior—human morality, such as our attitude toward killing people, or our attitude toward cheating, and so on and so forth—those actually may be a matter of fact, meaning that they are the expected outcome of the evolution of a society of a certain kind of (''inaudible''), certain kinds of animals, capable of thinking in fairly abstract manners and so on and so forth. If that is the case, seems to me that that approach begins to break down—it may not entirely break down, but it begins to at least blur the line—between factual and value judgments, because now the value judgment is predictable and explainable in terms of facts about nature.

S: Yeah, I agree that there are certain things that we, as human beings, value, and the evolutionary psychologists are certainly engaged in an attempt to explain why we make those value judgments—again, the evolutionary "why" –

M: Right.

S: – What was the advantage for us having these value judgments?—so – but I'm not sure I agree that having a causal evolutionary "why" to those values makes them not values. Again, I said that would – for me, that's science ''informing'' the value judgment. But we still place a value on life, we place a value on ''human'' life, and then we get to – there is some point where you have to make a judgment call. For example, how much relative value should we place upon animal life versus human life?

M: Right.

S: How much relative value should we place upon the life of an embryo versus the life of a mother?

M: Now, I think you're – I think you're right.

S: Science can inform these questions, but it ultimately comes down to a value judgment –

M: Right.

S: – that is outside the realm of pure empiricism.

M: I think you're right, but the way that, therefore, I would see it is not as clear a line of separation between facts on one hand and values on the other. I would see some values as actually explainable entirely, or in large part, as the result of facts of nature—for example, again, the kind of society – the kind of animal that we are, actually. Other values, are, on the other hand – may be informed by facts discovered by science but not entirely explained by it, and then there may be—but probably there very likely are—certain areas of moral judgment, such as, probably, the one you just touched upon, that is, how do we treat other animals—that are, in fact, essentially entirely outside the explanations of evolutionary biology.

S: Right.

M: That, to me, brings up an interesting model, however, of sort of a continuum between fact and value, rather than a sharp distinction.

S: I agree, which is true in so much of, you know, intellectual distinctions.

M: Right.

S: It's a fuzzy continuum, not a sharp demarcation. But that doesn't mean—and that's actually another logical fallacy –

M: Right.

S: – the false continuum—that doesn't mean that there isn't a distinction to be made at the extremes –

M: Right.

S: – that there aren't certain questions that are pretty purely factual and other questions that are pretty purely, you know, value judgments or moral, if you want to use that term.

M: Yes, I think you're right. But the question that concerns us as skeptics and scientists and so on is, well, how many people are going to be happy with this idea of a continuum? Now, it may be that a lot of people are simply going to be very unhappy with the idea that there is any continuity at all –

S: Right.

M: – and, you know, how do we....?

S: You know, I agree, but I think that this is such a critical, core intellectual concept that I don't think you can water it down.

M: Right.

S: I think we just have to, through education, get people to think in a little bit more complex way, and to appreciate the concept of continuum, because I just can't imagine dispensing with it or trying to teach concepts with a false dichotomy –

M: Right.

S: – without giving people the appreciation for how to think about continuum with, you know, pseudoscience on one end and science at the other end, and with a continuum in between, for example. And, again, pretty much anything you can – any distinction you can think to make is really probably a continuum and not a sharp demarcation.

M: Right. Right.

S: So, I agree with you that that's a very common fallacy that people fall into, and I think we just need to force our way through with education, to make these kinds of decisions.

M: Which brings us to the question of what kind of an education? And, as you know, there have been – there's been a lot of talk about, we need more science education and we need more scientific education will help solving these kind of problems. And, over the years, I've become convinced that, actually, we don't need more science education—at least not the kind of science education we're doing at the moment.

S: Right, we need better standards of care.

B: Critical thinking skills.

M: Or different. I think we need quite a different kind of science education, because, still today, a lot of our science education is—especially in disciplines such as biology, much less so in areas such as physics—but biology is, to a large extent, you know, a factual – applied in a factual manner.

S: Right.

M: So, you know, really, an introductory course in biology, it's almost as charming as the yellow pages. I mean, you just, you know, start with A and end with Z. And there is very little that we do to actually train our students and our children toward the real objective to education, which I think is critical thinking abilities.

B: Yeah.

M: Now, it is true, of course, that you cannot think on an empty mind, so (''inaudible'') critical thinking about something, you actually do have to know ''some'' of the facts.

S: Right.

M: But I really don't believe the model that the facts – that the critical thinking is simply going to be the result of seepage through an ocean of facts. I don't think we need the ocean of facts.

S: No, yeah, I agree. Clearly, the critical thinking—theory, understanding, and logic—does not flow naturally from just memorizing a bunch of facts.

M: Right.

S: There are certainly people that know lots of facts but have no real understanding—like, oh, Creationists, for example –

M: Right. Yes.

S: – or anyone that we would think of as a crank, you know. We know these people. They have all this factual knowledge, but they just don't get it.

M: Right.

S: At the same time, empty theories—you know, you tend to drift off into La La Land if you don't have some actual empirical facts to anchor you to reality.

M; That's right.

S: So, it's an interaction, an intimate interaction between the two: theory and fact working together hand-in-hand. That's – that is what we need to teach kids, and that's why intelligent design and creationism is such a – would be such a critical blow—and ''has'' been, in fact, a critical blow—to the quality of our science education, 'cause it really undercuts that relationship.

M: Right. Yes. You cannot – it's hard to exercise critical thinking when one of the possibilities on the table is that a supernatural being just did it. "And, why did he do it?" "Well, because he felt like it."

S: Right.

M: "And, how did he do it?" "Well, who knows? He was supernatural."

S: Right.

M: Well, there's not much you can go on from that kind of premise, obviously.

S: You mention that you weren't a big fan of evolutionary psychology –

M: Right.

S: – which is basically the discipline of trying to explain human motivations, and beliefs, and morality in evolutionary terms. What's your beef with that?

M: Well, the idea, I think, is sound—meaning that – you know, the basic idea is that, look, human beings are, of course, one kind of animal, and, as all other animals on Earth, we have an evolutionary history. We evolved by natural selection, among other mechanisms, over a long period of time, and so it's only logical to think that natural selection did not shape just our physical bodies, but it also shaped some of—at least, in part—our mental abilities.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: We know that natural selection can shape and change the behavior of a lot of animals, so why not humans?

S: Right.

M: So, the basic premise, I think, is fundamentally sound. The problem is this: Since, of course, as we know, behavior, especially humanly interesting behaviors, don't fossilize. They don't leave much of a fossil record.

S: Right.

M: Since we don't have – (''glitch'') – and the solution is made worse by the fact that there are no close relatives—phylogenetically speaking, evolutionarily speaking—to human beings alive today. You know, our closest relatives are chimpanzees and bonobos, which have diverged from us several million years ago. That's not even close by any standard of so-called phylogenetic comparative analysis. So we don't have – of course, there ''were'' other species of humans, but they all, for one reason or another, died off some time ago.

S: Well, let me just pause there for a minute, though. Have you – did you read [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan Carl Sagan]'s book ''Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors''?

M: Yes, mm-hmm.

S: So, I mean, actually, his line of argument in that book was looking at the behavior of chimps and primates to see if we can infer anything about human psychological evolutionary ancestors.

M: Right. Right, well –

S: So, you're not saying that we can't get ''any'' value from looking at chimps and our closest relatives?

M: No. No, I'm not saying that we can't get any value, but I'm saying that we can get very little value, for the following reason, and with all due respect to Carl Sagan, but – the reason is this: At best, we have a phylogenetic group—you know, close relatives—of three or four species. Right? You know, if you count the two species of chimpanzees and one gorilla.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: And that's simply not enough for any serious comparative phylogenetic analysis. In fact, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetic_comparative_methods comparative phylogenetics] is – has been a booming discipline in evolutionary biology for the last twenty years, but all the best studies that have been done in comparative phylogenetic studies usually include a large number of species that are fairly closely related to each other—meaning, at a minimum, twenty or thirty. The reason for that is because then you can apply statistical techniques that have been, you know, developed over the last several years.

S: Right.

M: The problem, therefore, with the case of humans is not that it's impossible in – as a matter of principle, or that these are particularly unsound ideas. It just happens that we're pretty unlucky in terms of number of comparisons we can make.

S: Right.

M: Now, that said, of course, yes, one can look at the behavior of chimpanzees or bonobos—which, by the way, are very different from each other and equally –

S: Right.

M: equally related to us—but, and, of course, get some clues or some interesting ideas, some interesting suggestions, about how certain human behaviors, or certain human traits have evolved. So, if, in fact, we were doing – if evolutionary psychology were a branch of philosophy, ''informed'' by science—that is, it's a way to build plausible stories about the origin of certain human traits, and you know what? We cannot really test them rigorously, but these are plausible—then I'm perfectly happy with them. In fact, that's exactly what I said a few minutes ago in this broadcast when I was talking about possible ideas about the evolution of morality, and so on and so forth.

S: Right.

M: But, the problem comes to me because when evolutionary psychologists really make a hard pitch for the idea that theirs is, in fact, a quantifiable science of empirically testable hypotheses. Largely, though not entirely, it's not. And it's not, not because of their fault, but because of the reality of the situation. We only have a few species to compare, not enough to carry out statistical tests, and we have otherwise very little information about what human environments were like—especially social environments were like—during the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene Pleistocine]. We have next to nothing in terms of knowledge of what humans actually did, behaved, or thought at the time.

S: Right.

M: And so, you know, to me, evolutionary psychology, at the moment—and I don't see how this is going to change any time soon—is an interesting way of thinking about how certain human traits may have come about, but it is really not a science in the satisfactory sense of the term.

S: Now, there's one other method that you didn't comment on, that might be more plausible for evolutionary psychology, and that is looking at the phenotypic expression, if you will, throughout currently existing human populations. So, although we only have one species, we do have a number of races, we have a number of isolated cultures, and what evolutionary psychologists do is look for those psychological traits which seem to be universal among humans, despite vast disparities in culture, and that is one other window onto evolutionary psychology. What do you think about that?

M: Yeah, again, that is a really reasonable approach, and a reasonable approach that was used by evolutionary biologists in – when they study other species. In some sense, however, it suffers from the opposite problem from the one we were just talking about. So, if we're talking about long-term evolution, as we said a minute ago, we're missing a sufficient number of comparisons. If we're talking about very, very short-term evolution—so we're talking about evolution within ''homo sapiens''—perhaps we can actually understand something about differences between existing populations of humans. But, when it comes down to how those universals that you were talking about actually get involved—you know, were they the result of natural selection, or of other evolutionary processes—there are evolutionary processes that are not selective in nature, so, for example, you know, random drift is the result of simply fixing certain genes in certain small populations—we know that human beings—we know from molecular data—that the human population at certain times in its history was, in fact, small enough to cause that sort of random drift of characteristics—so, for any particular camp that we see today, we're not going to be in a position to know if it was the result of natural selection—as, of course, evolutionary psychologists will maintain—or the result of, essentially, historical accidents. And that is, by the way, the one-million-dollar question in evolutionary biology, you know, how do you discriminate between selective histories and random accidents.

S: Right.

M: The way, usually, again, biologists do it is when they either have a very detailed level of information in the fossil record, or when they have a lot of closely related species. I can tell you one example: Look, this may be a little – the example itself is a little technical, but it's, I think, very illuminating about the sort of things that we would like to be able to do in evolutionary psychology, and that, I think, at the moment, at least, we can't do. One of the best examples published in the last few years of competitive phylogenetic studies in non-human animals was the – a study that dealt with the question of why certain fish have – the male fish have a long tail, which seems to be attractive to females. So, these are swordtail fish, which you can buy for your aquarium. And, it has been known for a long time that females have a preference for males that have a long tail. Well, the question was this: Did the preference evolve first, or did the tail evolve first? And how are you going to answer that sort of question? You cannot answer it by looking at variation within the current species, because you will find males with longer or shorter tails, and you will find females with more or less preference for long tails, but you won't be able—since they're all mixed around—you can't tell which one came first.

S: Right.

M: The way they solved this problem—this was an extremely elegant piece of work—they looked at – these researchers looked at the fifteen or twenty most closely-related species to the swordtail fish. Some of these species have the tail—the very close relatives—and some of them don't. The males don't have the tail. So, if you trace back the evolution of the tail, you will find that, at one point, a certain, you know, number of million years ago, there were fish that were closely related to the swordtail which did not have the tail. Turns out, however, that their females have the preference. So, if you expose the female of some close relatives without the tail, to a male that has an artificial tail, they'll go for it. That is a very strong indication that, in fact, the female preference evolved before the tail –

S: Before the tail.

M: Right. And the tail evolved as a result of the fact that, for whatever reason—which we don't know at the moment—some females did have that preference. Now, that's a beautiful example of how you can figure out, in fact, how natural selection can favor certain not only morphological traits, such as the tail, but certain – but interacts with behavioral traits, such as female preference. That's exactly the sort of stuff that evolutionary biologists would ''die'' to have in human species.

S: Right.

M: And, the problem, again, is that, unfortunately, we don't have twenty or twenty-five species to play with.

S: Right. One more attempt to rescue evolutionary psychology.

M: (laughter) OK!

P: (laughter)

S: One more attempt, and that is: computer models, where you essentially take preferences and subject them to computer evolutionary models, and then see what those – what advantages—survival advantages—those psychological preferences result in –

M: Right.

S: – to see how—''statistically'', how—that matches actual human preferences and human behavior. What do you think about that approach?

M: Right. Again, that's a very reasonable approach, and, in fact, actually, among the ones we've discussed so far, is probably the best.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: That goes back to the game-theoretical models of evolution of morality, actually, that I was mentioning some time earlier.

S: Right.

M: Again, those are very suggestive. And, you know, whenever we do get a match between a reasonably-built mathematical model and a reasonably valid –

S: Calibrated data.

M: Yeah, calibrated data, then – of course, that's a very interesting finding. It, by itself, of course, is not conclusive, but it's a heck of an interesting find. Now, that said, there are caveats there, too. Number one: Those models do depend, a lot, on the assumptions that are embedded in the parameters. So, the costs, for example, to fitness.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: And those assumptions are often just a guess of the modeler. You know, they're difficult to just find independently from an empirical perspective. This is not just for humans. It's a problem with game-theoretical models in general. The other thing is, again, it's difficult to get very reliable or meaningful data from modern human populations, because modern human populations, unfortunately, are, by and large, so mixed up, in terms of cultural values and influences. And, also, it's very difficult to measure fitness in modern environments. And, in fact, one can make the argument that fitness in modern environments is essentially irrelevant to the question, because what we really want to know is, what were the fitness payoffs in the Pleistocene –

S: Right.

M: – you know, during the time in which these traits really did evolve? Those fitness payoffs and trade-offs may have been very, very different from the ones you can measure today in modern human populations. So, again, it's not hopeless, but what I would like to stress is that I think evolutionary psychologists have a heck of a long way to go, and they don't seem—at least, I don't want to make a blanket statement here, but a lot of them don't seem—to be particularly concerned (let's put it this way) about these sort of limitations, which have been pointed out to them by a variety of sources.

S: So, just to change gears a little bit, reading through your website—which, by the way, if I didn't mention it earlier, you have a website called [http://rationallyspeaking.org/ rationallyspeaking.org], which has a large number of essays covering evolutionary biology, creationism and intelligent design, philosophy, and you even venture out into the misty world of politics, which we don't deal with too much on this show—but I did notice that you wrote an essay about a topic which is – a humorous topic of interest to skeptics, about the Brights phenomenon fiasco a couple of years ago.

M: Oh, yes.

S: Now, just a very a quick history: A couple of years ago, a couple of humanists came up with the idea of essentially renaming those people who take a naturalistic worldview, who believe that there's nothing supernatural or paranormal in the world, and, rather than being labeled with the negative terms that we've been stuck with—''atheist'', and ''skeptic'' –

B: ''Cynic''.

S: – that have a lot of negative connotations—to come up with a positive term, modeling this after the gay community essentially branding themselves as "gay", to basically engender a more positive outlook. Now, you wrote an article a couple of years ago, in 2003, essentially praising this movement and this idea.

M: Mm-hmm.

S: It seems to me that it hasn't really taken off in the last couple of years. Has your opinion of this changed at all since then?

M: Yeah, this is one of those areas in which I'm afraid it was a good idea, but, as you said, it hasn't worked, and probably it hasn't worked partially for the very reasons that were pointed out by critics at the beginning, which is: The parallel with the gay community is in fact compelling. I think the analysis there is correct –

S: Right.

M: – that part of what helped—certainly not the entire thing, but part of what helped—creating a positive image for the gay community is, in fact, the decision to call themselves gay. However—and, therefore, you know, something like "brights" sounds like a bright idea, as initial reactions went—however, unfortunately, "bright", especially in a society like the American one, has a very different connotation than "gay". You know, nobody would disagree with being called "gay", no one would consider somebody, you know, a snob because they consider themselves gay.

S: Right.

M: The word "bright", on the other hand, of course, especially for certain people—and, I must say, especially in a country like the United States, with a long history of several different currents of anti-intellectualism—

S: Right.

M: – to consider oneself "bright", and actually vocally say so, it's obviously, if not the ultimate sin, it's pretty close to it. So, I suppose that's the reason the thing has not worked, and, therefore, I would like to concede that, yes, it probably wasn't exactly as bright an idea as it sounded at the beginning.

P: (laughter)

S: Yeah, it kinda struck us as misguided, and even other early supporters like Michael Shermer have backed off. He wrote a commentary saying that, basically, this was an attempt at rebranding –

M: Right.

S: – and it was done without any marketing research, and without – not even an email to the community saying, "Hey, what do you guys think about this?" Their defense was, well, we didn't want to do things by committee. It would have taken forever, and sometimes you just have to do things –

M: Right.

S: – to get them done. But, they really tried to impose a term onto a very – certainly independently-thinking group of people by fiat, and I thought it was doomed from the outset—especially, as you point out, you know, calling oneself "gay" is not an automatic offense to those people who are – to whom you are not referring, because they will not – you know, being ''not'' gay is not an insult.

M: That's right. But not being bright –

B: (''inaudible'')

P: (laughter) Exactly.

S: Not being bright – yeah, "You're not bright." That is – so, no one is ever going to buy into a term that's an implied insult to everybody else.

M: That's right. Yes.

P: That's right.

S: So, I thought, for that reason, it was kind of doomed to failure.

M: Yep.

S: It does bring up the interesting question, though: What ''do'' we call ourselves? I mean, one thing that's interesting that came out of [http://business.highbeam.com/6258/article-1G1-112409027/big-bright-brouhaha-empirical-study-emerging-skeptical the "bright" brouhaha] was that, you know what? No one came up with a good alternate.

M: Right.

S: I don't know if you have any thoughts on this.

M: Well, so, first of all, it depends on what you mean by "ourselves", because, as you know, the skeptic community, for example, does include some people who ''are'' believers in some sort of supernatural –

S: Yeah, exactly.

M: In that case, you know, I don't want to use the term, for example, "secular humanist", because those people certainly wouldn't consider themselves that way. So, I think my answer to that is two-fold: On the one hand, I don't think we need ''one'' term, because we do actually have a large – you know, several different kinds of constituencies that are – they join efforts in certain areas. Again, skepticism is one of them.

S: Right.

M: You don't have to have – be a nonbeliever in order to be a skeptic in most areas of, you know, science and pseudoscience and so on. The other thing is, when people ask ''me'' what I am, normally I just call myself a "humanist"—not even using the world "secular" because, at this point, there is essentially – there are no non-secular humanists, as far as I'm concerned, anyway.

S: There are no divine humanists?

M: There are no divine humanists. Even though, of course, as you know, that that's how the term originated in the Renaissance. There were ''only'' divine humanists. There were only, you know, religious humanists.

S: Right.

M: But, as far as I'm concerned, the term "humanist" is good enough to describe what I believe. I don't subscribe to any supernatural power out there, certainly none that is concerned with human affairs, and, therefore, I am optimistic about, despite all the evidence, about what human beings can do. And, so, the word "humanist" fits pretty well.

S: Right.

M: If we're not talking about metaphysics, then I call myself a skeptic, because I think it still is the best term, especially if you want to clarify, the skeptic is not necessarily somebody who always says "no". It's a positive skepticism in the sense of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume David Hume].

S: Right.

M: You know, a skeptic is somebody who entertains ideas and subjects them to rational and empirical scrutiny instead of either accepting them without hesitation or rejecting them outright.

S: I agree. I mean, I think – I'm happy to call myself a skeptic. Sometimes I'll modify it by saying I'm a scientific skeptic, but it's basically a skeptic. In terms of religious beliefs, I call myself an agnostic. But I've basically accepted the fact that, no matter what I call myself, I'm going to have to explain it a little bit.

M: Yes.

S: There is no one term that does not require some explanation. But, you know, that's the nature of this whole endeavor. There's a certain amount of complexity to our philosophy and our beliefs, and they defy a single, especially monosyllabic, label, right?

M: And, in fact, that's not a bad idea at all, because the fact that we have to explain ourselves as soon as we label ourselves is actually a good thing, because it implies that, look, part of what we are about is engaging in a discourse with people and educating people about certain aspects of thinking. So, yeah, it does require explanation, and I really wouldn't want to see a (''inaudible'') in which it wouldn't require an explanation.

S: Right.

M: It's – explanations are good, because they engage people in discussions.

S: Yeah, although, admittedly, the downside to that is when you're trying to market a magazine like ''Skeptical Inquirer'' or ''Skeptic'' –

M: Yes.

S: – or you're trying to sell an organization like the New England Skeptical Society, there is a branding—a marketing—issue here. You do want a term that's going to be looked at initially positively, or at least curiously, and not have an initial negative reaction.

M: Sure.

S: I think that, just culturally, historically, almost anything that would reasonably define us—and, again, as you point out, "us" is lots of different things, but with just very loose philosophical connections—that anything that would define us, you know, probably has some negative baggage that goes along with it.

M: True. But, then again, could be worse. I mean, I just got from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] this nice certificate that says that I'm a ''upraxifer''. Well, now, there's a term that is not going anywhere.

S: A upraxifer?

M: Yes.

S: Yeah. Paul Kurtz is, by the way, the founder of both the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and the Secular – the Council for Secular Humanist, and he has a long history of these really obscure terms.

M: That's right.

S: The original name for the ''Skeptical Inquirer'' –

B: ''Zetetic''. Exactly.

S: – was the ''Zetetic''.

M: Yeah. (laughter)

S: Recently, I was at a meeting with him where we were trying to figure out what to name our medical journal that looks at, you know, controversial and pseudoscientific claims, and he had another Greek name that nobody would know what it meant. And I can't even remember what it was. That's how bad it is. But –

M: And that's bad sign right there, that you can't remember it.

S: Yeah, that's a (''inaudible''). Yeah, it's a challenge.

M: Ditto.

S: That's our cross to bear—in the skeptical movement, and in humanism, and in philosophical naturalism, and the entire spectrum and everything in between.

M: Yep.

S: Well, Massimo, it was a pleasure. We greatly enjoyed you having on our podcast, the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. You were, in fact, our first guest—our first guest skeptic on the show.

M: I am honored.

S: We appreciate it.

M: I am honored. It was my pleasure.

S: Thank you. We hope to have you back sometime.

M: Yes, definitely.

B: Thank you, Massimo.

P: All right. Thank you, Massimo.

S: And this is Steven Novella. Until next week, this has been the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

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SGU Episode 3

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== Introduction ==

S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. Today is June 7th, 2005. This is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me this week are Perry DeAngelis –

P: Hello, everybody.

S: – and Bob Novella.

B: Good-evening.

S: We have a special guest this week, Massimo Pigliucci, who i will introduce in a moment. But, first, some follow-up from our discussion last week.

== News Items ==
=== Smithsonian ID Fiasco Follow-Up (0:00:32) ===
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/01/AR2005060101986.html The Washington Post: Smithsonian Distances Itself From Controversial Film]

S: Last week we talked about what is now being known as the Smithsonian Institution ID Fiasco. For those of you who listened, the Smithsonian Institution agreed to co-sponsor a film, which was being promoted by the [http://www.discovery.org/ Discovery Institute], which is an intelligent design creationism proponent. The film was called –

P: Shocking lack of judgment.

P: Shocking.

S: A shocking lack of judgment and, we agreed, it was extremely naïve.

P: Yep.

B: And, Steve, they're more than just proponents. I mean, they are the major arm –

S: Yes.

B: – of the movement.

S: That's correct. They exist to promote intelligent design creationism. The film was [http://www.privilegedplanet.com/ ''The Privileged Planet: The Search for Design in the Universe''], or ''Purpose in the Universe''. As in response to the Smithsonian Institution's plan there was a backlash of criticism from the scientific and skeptical communities –

P: Shocked.

S: – and, which has happened in many cases, as we have discussed in the past, when school boards or institutions, you know, fall prey to either creationism or intelligent design, or are being used for this purpose, the blogosphere jumps on it, the cyberspace skeptical and scientific community can react almost instantaneously. Mr. Randall Kremer, who was the public affairs agent for the Smithsonian Institute, was flooded with emails. They were essentially embarrassed out of co-sponsoring the film, which is, you know, a minor victory for skeptical activism.

B: I mean, they should have been embarrassed.

S: They should've been embarrassed. Here, i'm going to read to you the email that i personally sent to Mr. Kremer –

B: – which, i think, just put it over the edge.

S: Yes.

B: That was the, you know, the straw that made them cave.

S: Clearly it was instrumental –

P: No doubt. No doubt.

S: – in this victory—which is, i think, probably representative of the kind of scientific backlash that they received. So here's the email:

<blockquote>Mr. Kremer,

As a scientist and educator i was very dismayed to hear that the prestigious Smithsonian Institution was co-sponsoring the screening of a film promoting the pseudoscience of intelligent design, ''The Privileged Planet: The Search for Purpose in the Universe''. I strongly urge you to reconsider this. The Discovery Institute is a pseudoscientific organization dedicated to promoting religious belief as science. Intelligent design is a thinly-veiled religious belief system designed deliberately to remove any overt religious references from what is otherwise classic creationism. Its purpose is to infiltrate institutions like SI in order to convince the public that it has scientific credentials. Do not be so naïve, as unfortunately others before you have, in thinking that screening this film at SI will not be used by the Discovery Institute and other promoters of ID as scientific authoritative endorsement of ID. In fact, they are already doing so. You have stated that SI policy is such that events of a religious or partisan political nature are not permitted. I would add to that list egregious pseudoscience. Even if you accept the propaganda that ID is not a religious belief, you must acknowledge the consensus opinion of the scientific community that it is simply not science. Do not let SI be exploited to promote an anti-scientific agenda.</blockquote>

P: Hear, hear.

S: And, again, feedback like that, you know, very – within days forced, embarrassed the Smithsonian Institutiton –

P: Must've – he must've got thousands of those.

S: Must've gotten thousands. I hope so. I mean, we and the New England Skeptical Society did our part in spreading the word and encouraging people to write similar emails.

P: And the JREF, with their financial offer –

S: Yeah, well, Randi only $20,000 to SI to ''not'' show the film. They did not accept his offer –

P: Right.

S: – and, in fact, they declined to accept the $16,000 from the Discovery Institute. So they're getting no money.

B: Well, i –

S: They're showing the film anyway.

B: Steve, i don't think they actually declined to accept it. I think they gave it back.

S: Well – yes, fine. The returned it.

P: My understanding was they returned it. They returned it, yeah.

S: They returned the 16,000 and they removed their co-sponsorship of the film, so – The film is still being screened, you know, at a private function in the Smithsonian Institute, but it's not being sponsored, they're not accepting any funds from them, and clearly the imprimatur, the validation, of a prestigious scientific institution like the Smithsonian Institute has been removed from this film and from the Discovery Institute.

P: So it's 90% good. It's not 100%, it's 90%.

S: And i think that they'll be more wary the next time.

P: Right.

S: The real victory here is that this will not happen again. Hopefully.

P: What were they thinking?

S: What were they thinking?

P: Yeah. It's crazy. Crazy.

S: Just incredible.

== Science or Fiction (0:05:09) ==

S: We are going to also introduce a new segment this week, a segment called "Science or Fiction". In this segment, i am going to challenge my panel of skeptics. I have three news items—scientific breakthroughs, scientific news items—from the past week. I'm going to read you a brief summary of each of those items. The trick is that one of these items is not real. One of these items is fiction. The other two are genuine scientific breakthroughs, one is fiction. The challenge for you two this week is to try to decide which one is the fake one.

P: Mere child's play.

S: You have to bring all of your skeptical tools to bear to see if you can sniff out the fake. You can make your comments about each one as i present them, but wait until i've stated all three before you make your guess as to which one is fake. Are you ready?

B: Mm-hmm.

P: Sure.

S: Let's play.

B: Go for it.

S: [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7475-dolphins-teach-their-children-to-use-sponges.html Item number one]: Dolphins have been observed not only using tools, but also teaching tool use to their children. This is the first example of cultural tool use in a non-primate species. That's item number one.

P: Interesting.

S: Item number two: Astronomers have discovered an Earth-like planet orbiting a nearby star, 50 light years from Earth. This is the first Earth-sized planet discovered around another star, and astronomers say there are indications that the planet has an atmosphere. This is the best candidate so far for extraterrestrial life.

P: How far?

S: It's about 50 light years from our system.

P: All right.

S: [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050605183843.htm Item number three]: French scientists have discovered a way to keep water from freezing at hundreds of degrees below zero—near absolute zero. Those are your three items. What are your thoughts?

B: Wow. I've got problems with all of them.

S: I know. That's why they were chosen.

P: (laughter)

B: OK, the dolphins. You said one thing at the end, though, that piqued my interest there. You said that it's the first non-primate species shown to use tools?

S: Right. Well, cultural tool use. In other words, they're – it's not something that's just innate. They're actually teaching this to their children.

B: OK. 'Cause when you said that, i thought of – 'cause i know there are birds that will actually use tools to –

S: There are. And there're some birds that have some problem-solving skills.

B: Right.

S: But this is – they're actually –

B: It's cultural. There's actually a cultural thing.

S: They were observed teaching the tool use, yes.

B: OK, now i – i mean, since, of course, they don't have any hands or opposable thumbs, i assume they're not using their flippers. It would have to be their mouth. So maybe somehow they're using their mouth to manipulate an object they find on the sea floor. I don't think that's – i don't think that's a fact.

P: As for me, i'm gonna say that the first one is the truth. I recently, within the last week, saw a special, i think on the Discovery Channel. You know, it showed dolphins being very sophisticated, particularly a thing that they showed that really struck me was how two males would team up for a long time and keep a female hostage between the two of them. They'd swim around with her, never let her get very far from them –

B: I've heard of that.

P: – for months –

B: Months?

P: – months, they would keep her, so that she would only mate with them.

S: They're smart critters. They're vey smart critters.

B: Wow.

P: She'd try to get away, they'd attack her and really keep her corralled.

B: Now –

P: Anyway, it sounds accurate to me, the first one.

B: The second one has got to be false. We simply are not at the –

P: Yeah, it's too far.

B: No, not actually.

P: To see an atmosphere?

B: Fifty light years is not too far. It's the actual size that can't be right. Earth-sized planets we simply don't have the technology yet to ascertain the – to determine or to find planets that are Earth-sized. Typically, the only things we find are bigger than actually Jupiter –

P: Yeah.

B: – so we're talking thousands and thousands of times bigger than the Earth.

P: He went beyond that, too, Bob. He said that they had evidence that there was an atmosphere on it. How the heck –

B: Well, that's possible. I mean, you could – i think –

P: Not that size.

B: Well, using something –

S: All it requires is spectroscopic analysis –

B: Right.

S: – of the light coming from the atmosphere.

B: Spectroscopy would tell you if there were certain elements in the atmosphere. That's not what concerns me. It's the size, and that's just too small. We haven't – we're not close to detecting Earth-sized yet.

P: That one sounds false to me.

B: We will get there, though. We'll get there, but we're not there yet. Now, that – it doesn't matter what technique they're using. They could be using, you know, the gravitational disturbance of the parent star caused by the planet.

P: Wobbling.

B: Still, Earth-sized planets are just too small to create a nudge that's detectable yet.

S: Interesting.

P: Now, the last one, about the water. I mean, it's impressive –

B: Let me make one more comment about the second one. The other technique is actually—and it was recently perfected. They've actually – they claim to have discovered a planet that was the first planet discovered purely from the reflected light of the parent star, which was quite an achievement. But, still, that was a huge planet, a huge amount of light, relatively speaking.

S: So you don't think we're ready for this breakthrough yet.

B: No, not yet. We will definitely get there, and maybe relatively soon. Maybe, you know, maybe ten years, six years, but i've heard nothing approaching Earth-sized yet. And, the third one. Perry, did you want to comment on the water?

P: I was simply saying that it's impressive, but it simply seems more reasonable. Not precisely sure how you'd go about doing it.

S: Even though they were French scientists?

(laughter)

P: Yeah, well, we're suspending our disbelief for the moment.

B: At what temperature did you say, Steve? You mentioned near absolute zero.

P: Hundreds of degrees below zero.

S: Single digits.

B: Single degrees near absolute zero?

S: Yeah. Eight degrees was, i think, the figure given.

P: That's crazy.

B: That's – now that's liquid? Liquid water? I don't – no, i don't see that happening. No.

P: You gotta choose between the two of them.

B: I know. That's just too damn cold. I mean, even, you know, moving water can get colder than 32 by the fact that it's moving, will lower the freezing temperature a little bit, but to that degree? Maybe there's some sort of state that can get water into that makes it somewhat immune to freezing, but i can't imagine what that might be. Let's see. What – how could they – what could they possibly do to liquid water to maintain that state?

P: I have – i don't know.

B: – even that close –

P: Move it at an incredibly high speed?

S: So it's time to cast your votes.

B: OK. By definition –

P: Yeah, i'm still – i still think number two is less reasonable.

S: Perry votes for number two, the Earth-sized planet around another star. Bob?

B: Is what, true? Science or fiction?

S: As the fake one. As the fiction.

P: As the fiction. I'm writing that down as –

B: Now, there's two fiction. Aren't there two fiction?

S: No, there's one fiction. There's two are real.

P: Right. I believe that number two is fiction.

B: I could have sworn you said one real, two fiction.

P: Come on, Bob.

S: Two are science, one is fiction.

P: These rules are not complicated, Bob.

B: OK. Then, well, it's gotta be two. Two is definitely fiction.

S: So you both cast your vote for two.

P: Correct.

B: Too small.

S: OK. Well, you are both good skeptics. You got the correct answer.

P: (''inaudible'') we are!

S: You did very well.

P: Now, how did the scientist do that with the water?

B: I'm dying to know.

S: Well, we'll take them in order. Let's take them in order.

P: We'll take them in order.

S: A group of dolphins living off the coast of Australia teach their offspring to use their snouts with sponges while foraging for food in the sea floor. So, they actually put sponges on their noses to protect their – to protect them while foraging on the sea floor.

B: How do they do this?

S: Then they caught – They stick it on there. And then they caught mothers teaching this to their children.

P: Wow. Wow.

B: That's fascinating. So if they get, like, a –

S: You were right. Your intuition was right. It was something – they use their snout, not their flippers.

P: Smart critters.

B: Absolutely. So, if they get, like, a red sponge and stick it to their nose, they look kind of like clownfish? Is that how it works?

P: Bob.

S: I guess so.

P: Badum-bum.

S: This is by Krützen and colleagues. They analyzed thirteen, what they're calling "spongers", and 172 non-spongers, and concluded that the practice seems to be passed along family lines, primarily from mothers to daughters, for some reason.

B: That's very believable. I mean, they're just so intelligent. It seems –

P: Women do most of the work in the animal kingdom. That's why.

B: It seems very likely that they improvised some sort of tool use with their snouts. OK. Makes sense.

S: You're absolutely right with number two. I think that that is eventually going to be a headline –

P: Right.

S: – but it's just a few years too early.

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But Bob is just too up-to-date on the planet-hunting state of the art.

P: Hey, hey! I guessed it, too.

S: You did! But Bob had the details. It's true. You both sniffed that one out.

P: Thank you.

B: Water me! Come on, tell me, what's the (''inaudible'') do this?

S: OK. Here's the headline. You're gonna love it. "Nanotube water doesn't freeze, even at hundreds of degrees below zero."

B: Wow.

S: So, what French scientists have done is, they've – they are using the carbon nanotubes as a template, and the water molecules filling these tubes take on a similar structure, where the hydrogen and oxygen atoms form a lattice-like bond, and they – it will not freeze. It will continue to flow through this tube, even down to near-absolute temperatures.

B: That's fascinating.

P: Hum.

B: My god. It changes the molecular arrangement of the water?

S: Yeah, it actually changes the molecular arrangement of the water.

B: But can you still consider it liquid water, though?

S: You know, it's – that's a good question. I didn't say it remained a liquid. I said it didn't freeze.

B: A-ha! OK.

P: It's true.

S: It may actually be another state of water.

B: That makes more sense.

S: It may not technically be the same state as, you know, normal liquid water.

P: Sort of plasmic?

S: It's not a plasma.

B: No.

S: I mean, it's a new – and i don't know if they're actually going to call it a new ''phase'', but it definitely is a new ''state'' that water is in. And it is more like liquid than like ice. It certainly does not form ice crystals. It stays in this lattice formation and does not, you know, freeze into the normal crystalline structure that water ice has.

B: Yeah. It definitely doesn't sound like any of the other states of matter could account for that. I mean, you couldn't – it doesn't sound liquid to me, it doesn't sound – maybe it's a different type of solid. It's definitely not the other types, like plasma that Perry mentioned, or some of the more exotic ones, the Bose–Einstein condensates and the fermionic condensates. It can't be that, either. So, maybe it's a new type of solid for water. OK.

P: Interesting as heck.

S: Very interesting. It remains to be seen what the applications of this would be, but these nanotubes technology is, you know, very, very new and very, very active area of research, and this is just one example.

B: The applications are – appear to be just utterly mind-boggling for these nanotubes. I've never seen a discovery take off in quite the way that nanotubes has. I mean, just from the get-go, you know, the interest was worldwide, and since then they've found potential applications from computing to fibers to, maybe—to all sorts of applications—electronics. It's amazing how versatile this material appears to be. I think we'll be hearing a lot about nanotubes.

S: Very interesting. Well, it is now time to bring on our guest.

== Interview with Massimo Pigliucci (0:16:22) ==
[http://rationallyspeaking.org/ Dr. Pigliucci’s website]

S: With us this week is Dr. Massimo Pigliucci, who we simply call our friend (booming voice) Massimo.

P: (laughs)

S: Massimo is Associate Professor of Evolutionary Biology at SUNY Stony Brook in Long Island. He has published over 70 technical papers in evolution and botany. He's written seven books. His most recent non-technical book is ''Denying Evolution''. He's the author of a column in ''Skeptical Inquirer'' magazine called "Thinking About Science", and he's a frequent contributor not only to ''Skeptical Inquirer'' but also ''Skeptic'', ''Free Inquiry'', ''Philosophy Now'', and ''Philosopher's Magazine''. He has a doctorate in genetics from the University of Ferrarra in Italy, a PhD in botany from the University of Connecticut, and a PhD in philosophy from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, Massimo.

M: Thank you for having me. That list always sounds a little bit embarrassing.

(laughter)

S: Yeah, it always is embarrassing to hear somebody else read your own CV.

B: I wish i had such a list.

P: It's daunting, yes.

S: Thank you for being on our show this week. We appreciate it.

M: My pleasure.

S: So, i'm sure you've been following, in the news over the last few weeks, the recent activity of the – our friends, the intelligent design crew –

M: Yes, indeed.

S: – in Kansas City with the – We just got through talking about the Smithsonian Institute debacle –

M: Right.

S: – which, if you hadn't heard, they backed off from cosponsoring the Discovery Institute film.

M: Right. See, sometimes it works.

S: Sometimes it does work. Sometimes it does work.

P: Amen.

S: And, hopefully, people, you know, like the director of the Smithsonian, will think twice before, you know, falling for the Discovery Institute's coy offers in the future. So, what have you been doing recently, in terms of investigating or writing about the intelligent design crew?

M: Well, one thing that i've ''not'' been doing is to go to Kansas for those [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_evolution_hearings scam hearings that they organized with the local Board of Education].

S: Were you invited?

M: Yes, i was actually invited, and i followed the advice of Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education, more or less politely responding that i was – it wouldn't be a good idea for any scientists to participate.

P: So, Massimo, you agree with the basic, what i've been reading, then, in that the scientific community is really refraining from speaking at those hearings? You agree with that?

M: Right. I agree, and that's actually a change of heart for me, because in the past i've been involved in direct debates with creationists, intelligent design proponents, and so on and so forth. Now, under certain circumstances, those debates are actually fun, i guess, and may have a purpose, depending on the venue and the format and so on. But, definitely, in front of a school board, it's not – it doesn't seem like a good idea, because it really, in that case, does provide the other side with some legitimacy that they, frankly, don't deserve.

S: But do you – critics have said – critics of the decision of Eugenie Scott, and you, obviously, and of scientists that she advised, to boycott those hearings, have said that they already have legitimacy by the mere fact that they're before a school board, and then, therefore, shouldn't the mainstream scientific position be represented? What do you say about that?

M: Well, it depends on – i think, when we're talking about legitimacy, it depends on who bestows the legitimacy. It seems to me that one thing is to be invited by a school board, who as we know, is elected, and doesn't necessarily have much of an effect on either science, or education for that matter. Another thing is to be, on the other hand, given some credence from a professional biologist or a professional scientist, and that's what, i guess, we wanted to avoid in this case. Incidentally, the message was, in no uncertain terms, directed mostly to the school board. In other words, we told them that this was not an acceptable way of deciding these sort of matters.

S: Do you think that strategy worked?

M: I think it worked better than the alternative in this particular case. We'll see, of course, what the final outcome of the Kansas equation is.

P: Right.

M: Apparently, in Kansas, there is never a final outcome.

S: Right.

M: They can change their mind every other year.

P: It's true.

S: We thought it was interesting, the other – the unique or new aspect of this case was that the school board's decision, what they've said so far—now, they haven't rendered a final decision—went beyond just the creation–evolution issue to actually redefining science.

M: Which is, of course – right. Which is, of course, what the intelligent design side actually wants. Beginning with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_E._Johnson Phillip Johnson]'s early books, and certainly now with their chief intellectual [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A._Dembski Bill Dembski], what they want is, in fact, to redefine science. And that's an interesting point, which, i guess, we should spend a couple of minutes on. I have often said –i've debated Bill Dembski a couple of times, and we have exchanged opinions in writings as well, and here is Dembski's position, which sounds very reasonable, and i think it's one of the reasons it's so appealing to, sort of, people who don't have much of a philosophical background, even some scientists. His position is the following: He says, look, it used to be that anything – different kinds of potential causes for events were allowed as possible explanations, since the time of Aristotle—Aristotle included final causes, of course, to which intelligent design will belong—as acceptable kind of answers when one wonders about what's going on in the universe. And, then, Dembski says, Bacon came on—the British philosopher—came on the scene in the sixteenth century and decided, more or less arbitrarily, that final causes were out, that science was only a matter of ''how'' and not of ''why'', and, ever since, according to Dembski, science has been impoverished, and it's time to bring things back, essentially, to the wholeness of the Aristotelian approach. Now, that sounds very interesting, except that there are a couple of things that don't work. First of all, Aristotle never used final causes in a way that Bill Dembski will like to begin with.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: But that's a minor point. The major point is this: There was a very good reason why Bacon did – suggested what he suggested, which was, you realize that science wasn't going to get off the ground while it was still messing around with supernatural explanations. If one always had the supernatural card to play, any time that one was sort of running out of options, then science would simply never really be able to make progress in understanding the natural world.

S: Right.

M: So, that's why he said that those kinds of answers are out. Now, that worked very well for about a couple of centuries, especially in physics—Galileo, Newton, and so on. Then, Darwin came to play, and the game changed again, because, in fact, Darwin did contribute what—Dembski maintains—Darwin did reintroduce final causes in science, in biology. The question of why things happen is a fundamental question in evolutionary biology, and it is a perfectly fair question, which is pursued by biologists since Darwin. It's just that we answer in a different way. When we ask, "Why is the eye structured the way it is?", the answer is "Because natural selection favored certain variations on that structure, which worked better for the purpose of visualizing objects, and so on and so forth. In other words, there is a role for "why" questions in biology. It's just that the answer is grammatically different from the one that intelligent design proponents would want to see in – consider as questions in science.

S: Right. "Why" questions are essentially mechanism. "What is the mechanism of this phenomenon?"

M: The long-term mechanisms. So, the distinction here in biology is particularly clear, between "how" questions and "why" questions. So, i can ask those questions, for example, again, about the eye, and if i ask "How does it work?", then what i mean is, "What are the molecular, et cetera, mechanisms that allow the image to be – you know, the light to be captured, the image to be formed and to be sent to the brain, and so on and so forth?" But if i ask, "Why is the eye there to begin with?", then the answer is—regardless of specific mechanisms—the answer is, "Because there is an advantage for certain living organisms to be able to see what – you know, to perceive and understand their surroundings in terms of light waves.

S: Right. So, evolution is the ultimate "why" answer in – for biology, for biological "why" questions.

M: That's right.

S: Dembski and his crowd would like to reintroduce—essentially take us back before Darwin, before Galileo, before Bacon, even—and to reintroduce supernatural or divine causes into scientific questions. What they say is that by not allowing them we're essentially rigging the game against those types of answers.

M: Right.

S: What's your response to that?

M: Well, my response is that – suppose—i actually asked this question to Dembski at one point, at a meeting at the New York Academy of Sciences a couple of years ago—and the question is, OK, well, suppose, for a moment, that, in fact, we do allow intelligent design, in the sense that Dembski means, back into science. So suppose that i'm going to be, all of a sudden, the director of the National Science Foundation, and i decide to give, you know, three million dollars, over a period of five years, to Dembski—which is a pretty good grant by NSF standards—and i ask him, "What would you do? What sort of experiments would you set up? What sort of empirical hypotheses would you be able to test?" And he had no answer.

P: It's a good question.

M: Yeah! He had no answer.

S: Of course he has no answer. Yeah.

M: So, that is why, i think – so, i guess, to go back to your question, there are two different kinds of answers to "Why is it that the supernatural is out by definition?", essentially. One is the pragmatic one, the one that i just provided. You know, from the point of view of practical scientists, i want to see, you know, the proof is in the pudding. What is he going to do? Suppose that i do give you the money. What sort of hypotheses can you test? And, of course, the answer, again, is "None.", because, by definition, of course, the supernatural agent can do whatever the heck he wants –

S: Right.

M: – and, so, there's no way to predict, and therefore to test, what he's going to do. The other answer is, i think, a little deeper, and that's the philosophical answer—and, as you know, most scientists are not particularly well-versed in philosophy—but the philosophical answer is this: It is a matter of principle, once that you invoke the supernatural, you will not be able to propose empirically testable hypotheses. In other words, it's not just a matter of Bill Dembski's limited imagination, or anybody else's limited imagination, that at the moment we can't think of one, but give me enough time and i'll come up with one. A philosopher would argue that, as a matter of principle, if you abandon the position of methodological naturalism in science, you're dead. You're not doing science anymore. You're maybe doing something else—you might be doing theology, you might be doing some sort of philosophy—but you're certainly not doing science. And it is that difference, of course, between philosophical and methodological naturalism, that is very important, is apparently a little subtle for most people –

S: Right.

M: – but it's very important in terms of this debate.

S: Right, and they either don't get it or don't want to get it.

M: Right. (laughs) I do have the suspicion sometimes that they don't want to get it.

S: They don't want to get it. Because, you know, how many times can you explain it to them –

M: Right.

S: – and to really not understand it, you know, stretches the imagination.

M: Right. I mean, i can see how some people with no background in either science or philosophy might be a little puzzled by this difference, which, by the way, we should probably explain, but somebody like Bill Dembski, who does, actually, in fact, have a degree in philosophy, it's hard to believe that he doesn't understand the implications of that distinction.

S: Right, and i've had the same experience as you. If you remember, we were together at the [http://business.highbeam.com/5799/article-1G1-91236216/fourth-world-skeptics-conference-burbank-lively-foment World Skeptics Conference] a couple of years ago –

M: Yeah.

S: – and i had the opportunity to ask, i think it was Nelson –

M: Mm-hmm.

S: – a similar kind of question –

M: Yeah, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Nelson_(creationist) Paul Nelson].

S: – and what he said was that, you know, you cannot question the mind of god. If i say – which means, as you just said, any hypothesis about intelligent design—about the intelligent designer—that you could seek to test or falsify is rendered unfalsifiable by that statement –

M: Right.

S: – because you can't ask the question, "What would, or what should, the world look like if it were designed by an intelligent designer?", because there's no answer to that question. The answer is, "It looks like whatever it looks like." –

M: Right.

S: – and, therefore, it's not falsifiable, and, therefore, not science.

M: Correct. There is –

B: But couldn't –

S: You know they have to understand that.

M: Right. There is a caveat there—which, of course, is something that Dembski either as a matter of – either on purpose or because he really doesn't see the difference, he insists on this point—he says, "But, look: There's plenty of good science that is done under the assumption of intelligent design." He talks about forensic science, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and so on and so forth. And, of course, he's right: That kind of science—archeology, for example—''is'' done under the presumption of intelligent design. But, in those cases, you can, in fact, question the mind of the designer.

S: Right.

M: In fact, the whole point is that you do know, or at least make hypotheses about –

B: Excellent.

M: – what the designer is doing and why –

S: Right.

M: If you couldn't do that, then there would be no archeology, no SETI –

S: Right,

M: – and no forensic science.

S: Exactly.

P: Exactly.

B: That's a good point.

M: And, so, ''intelligent design'' is a little too broad of a term in –

S: So it's a false analogy on their part.

M: That's right. Exactly. It is.

S: I've always – it's always struck me, too, that it's one enormous logical fallacy. Now, we keep track of logical fallacies on the show. We actually have our [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/resources/logicalfallacies.aspx top 20 list of logical fallacies] –

M: (laugter)

S: – which you can read on our website. It's at [http://www.theness.com/ theness.com]. There's a couple that they're using here. One, of course, is the argument from ignorance: "We don't know something, therefore god did it."

M: Right.

S: And we – specifically, in this type of explanation, you can also call that the "god of the gaps" argument.

M: Right.

S: But it's also confusing ''currently unexplained'' with ''unexplainable''. Again, that's sort of, "The current gap of knowledge, that's what god did."

M: Right.

S: And, as that gap retreats, and the ever-advancing, you know, knowledge of science, god still fills whatever gaps and crevices are currently unexplained as if they never will be explained –

M: Right.

S: – even though, tomorrow, they ''are'' explained.

M: I would make, also, an even third-level distinction. That is, there are two kinds of unexplainable questions or phenomena.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: There is the impossibility to explain something because, in fact, there is, essentially, no explanation within the realm of natural laws—which is the sort of unexplainable phenomenon that Dembski likes—but there is also what philosophers call ''epistemic unexplainability''. There may be some things out there that are explainable in the sense that there ''is'' an answer somewhere, but, because of the limitations, both current and for possibly future human understanding and human reason, we might never be able to get the answer.

S: Right.

M: So, one possible –

B: It's like a dog –

M: Yes.

B: It's like a dog trying to understand calculus.

M: That's right. Exactly.

B: It's never going to happen.

M: And there are some interesting possible examples within science. So, for example, the question of the origin of life ''may'' fall into that category—not because the origin of life is unexplainable in principle—i don't think it is—and, of course, we ''may'' explain it. I mean, you know, next week, we may see an article in ''Science'' or ''Nature'', somebody has actually come up with the right answer. But it may also be the sort of thing that is epistemically unexplainable by human beings simply because there's very, if any, clues left, essentially. You know, something that happened four billion years ago. There are no fossils. We have very little understanding, or way to get decent information, about what the conditions actually were. So we might never be able to answer that question. But that—even that, even granting that—it still doesn't bring you any closer to the necessity of a supernatural explanation.

S: Right, right. Once again, we are speaking to Massimo Pigliucci, philosopher and evolutionary scientist, and author of many articles and books. We've been talking about the intelligent design phenomenon and proponents of intelligent design, which brings us, really, to the philosophical underpinnings of science itself—What is the difference between science and religion, philosophically?—and we've brought up some terms like "philosophical naturalism"—our organization, for example, advocates what i would call "scientific skepticism"—and there are some subtle differences between these types of philosophies. You've written several reviews and articles, for example, criticizing [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould Stephen Jay Gould]'s summary, or summation –

M: Right.

S: – of the relationship between science and religion.

M: Right.

S: Gould came up with this idea of "non-overlapping magesteria", in which both science and religion occupy different –

B: Domains of knowledge.

S: – intellectual domains—right, different domains of knowledge he calls "magesteria"—and they each serve their purpose. You're very – you have been very critical of this idea.

M: Well, for plenty of reasons. I mean, there's not – i should probably start out by saying that i am not a Gould-hater like some of my colleagues. I really like some of the stuff that Stephen Gould wrote, both technical and non-technical, and i really dislike some of the other stuff. In particular, about religion, there are a couple of things that really, i think, are worth considering in that context. First of all, Gould did not come up with the basic idea that you mention, although he did come up with the fancy name, but that idea goes back, essentially, all the way to St. Augustine.

S: Yes, and he acknowledges that, to be fair, yeah.

M: Right. Now, the basic idea, however, is, i think, a bit misleading, for two reasons: Number one, because it hinges on the definition of "god", which Gould leaves kind of up in the air for most of that book. At one point, he finally has to come to terms with the fact that, well, in fact, there are some conceptions of god that do go head-on against science. For example, if you are a Young Earth Creationist who believes that there was a worldwide flood four thousand years old – ago, then, i'm sorry, science just tells you you're wrong. And, if your belief in god hinges on that particular belief then you're dead in the water. So even Gould had to acknowledge that it really depends on what you mean by "god" and what particular version of "god" you're espousing, which is, of course, very different from the question of science. There are no different varieties of science that we're talking about here. It's either you're – you know, scientists disagree on specific theories, but there is, essentially, one body of methods and knowledge that we call "science". On the other hand, religion is an incredibly heterogeneous body of beliefs. So, one has to, at least, to be clear on what one means, because it sounds very nice, it sounds very ecumenical, to say, "Well, science and religion can be different areas of expertise, and let's just keep them separate." Well, it depends. But even within the kind of religion that does not have any direct conflict with science—So, suppose you're, you know, a progressive Catholic. You know, the Pope. The previous Pope, John Paul II, as we know, did acknowledge that the Catholic Church does not have much of a problem—have a problem at all—with the modern theory of – biological theory of evolution.

S: Right.

M: OK. Well, that sounds very good. That still does not amount to say that there's no overlap at all between the two areas of intellectual endeavor. For one thing, because part of science is now getting, actually, to the point of providing explanations, at least tentative explanations, for where religious beliefs and morality come from to begin with.

P: Mm-hmm.

M: Now, i'm not a particular defender of evolutionary psychology, either, but the ideas are out there. And the fact that the ideas are out there means that science is, in fact, beginning to encroach in the area – on the area of morality, and religious beliefs, and so on and so forth. Should we kick it out, just because we feel uncomfortable about it, or because some people feel uncomfortable about it? I don't think so. That's not to say that current ideas about evolution are more likely or necessarily correct, but it's just that it is worth exploring as a possibility.

S: Right.

M: And, lastly, there – the last thing that really, i guess, prompted my disagreement with Gould, is that he seems to somehow have forgotten that there is a whole different area of human knowledge, or human intellectual endeavor, that greatly overlaps, and often contradicts, some religious positions, and that's, of course, philosophy—particularly moral philosophy. So, to say, as he says in that book, that morality is the province of religion—well, wait a minute. Actually, morality is the province of a lot of different kinds of activities—as i said a minute ago, even possibly science—but certainly not ''only'' religion. So, in other words, the situation, it seems to me, is a lot more complicated than the nice and, you know, neat distinction that Gould was trying to make.

S: Yeah, i agree. He did see – he did go out of his way to sort of overstate the historical non-overlapping of science and religion, and it struck me that you have to sort of, you know, turn a blind eye to all of the cases of – you know, religion, essentially, completely dominated science, was ''the'' explanation for the natural world, and has had to retreat territory, if you will, to scientific explanations and the institution of science. But, do you think you could, you know, rescue a legitimate point from Gould's position by saying that what he's describing is not the historical relationship between science and religion but what the relationship should be—in other words, that religion ''should'' avoid overlapping with science and ''should'' restrict itself to the domains of morality and to the great unanswerable questions of existence that are inherently not explainable or not explorable by scientific methods? What would you say to that?

M: I think that is a fair point. However, the question then can also be asked the other way around: Should science be restricted from inquiries into morality and religious beliefs and so on?

S: Well, you could – as we were saying with the intelligent design thing, there are some questions that are simply outside the realm of science –

M: Right.

S: – and you can argue that, well, if, once you're outside the realm of science by, you know, methodological naturalism, then, you know, that is the domain of faith. You're free to have any arbitrary belief or faith that you choose, because these are questions that are inherently outside of the scientific realm. For example, you may – some people believe that the question of whether or not god exists—or any power or entity or ''thing'' that is outside of the natural laws of the universe, not bound by nature, if you will—that that's an inherently unanswerable question by science and therefore is in the realm of faith.

M: Right.

S: Would you agree with that non-overlapping aspect?

M: Right. Yes, i would agree with that nonoverlapping – i'm afraid, however, that that would leave very little outside, in fact, of the realm of science, and i'm perfectly happy – if people are happy with that conclusion –

S: Yes.

M: – i'm fine to go along with it. But the kind of questions—the kind of encroaching of science into the territory of religion and morality that i was referring to—does not deal directly with the question of the existence of god—which, you're right, it's by definition outside the realm of science. But there are other things that are close enough to really bother a lot of religious believers that science is now beginning to encroach upon.

S: Right.

M: So, suppose that we do come up, eventually, with a very reasonable, very serious theory of how morality—a sense of morality, at least, and even possibly some certain specific moral rules—evolved by natural selection among primates and (''inaudible'') you know, groups or societies.

S: Right.

M: Well, you know, is that encroaching on religion, or not?

S: Well, this is what i would say to this—and this is – i've certainly heard humanists and others take this approach—that science deals with statements of fact—what is the state of history, the state of nature—whereas morality deals with statements of value. So, whenever you have to make a value judgment, that is a question that can be informed—factually informed—by science, but cannot be made scientifically.

M: Mm-hmm.

S: So, that is a very practical and real place to draw the line—again, to map out these domains.

M: Right. So, what you're referring to is what, in philosophy, is known as the naturalistic fallacy, which was discussed originally by David Hume. The idea was, in fact, that you cannot go from what ''is'' to what ''ought to be'' –

S: Right.

M: – from a matter of fact to a matter of value. OK. Now, i have actually taken that position myself in the past and, quite frankly, at this moment i keep vesseling back and forth.

S: Right.

M: So, don't necessarily hold me to what i'm about to say in a few months, because i may change my mind again. But, there is some interesting situations here that need to be discussed. So, while i will certainly grant that there are – there is a large area of specific moral decisions that are very far from anything that science can say at the moment, there are some particular moral values—particular moral rules—that seem to be, in fact, fairly straightforwardly explainable by science. For example, there is a whole area now in philosophy of ethics and philosophy of morality that looks at the use of optimality models—game theoretical models—to predict what sort of behavior would be optimal in a group of individuals, given certain constraints. This is a sort of mathematical modeling that has been done in evolutionary biology for a long time, but until recently, it has not been applied, in fact, directly to questions of human morality. Well, it turns out that when people have—in the last three or four years, there've been a series of papers in major science magazines—when people have, in fact, applied that kind of game-theoretical approach to realistic situations and have actually tested their predictions, with actual real human beings, the funny thing that turned out is that the models were able to predict, very closely, what real human beings would consider – how they would act and what they would consider moral or nonmoral. That raises the question that some kinds of human behavior—human morality, such as our attitude toward killing people, or our attitude toward cheating, and so on and so forth—those actually may be a matter of fact, meaning that they are the expected outcome of the evolution of a society of a certain kind of (''inaudible''), certain kinds of animals, capable of thinking in fairly abstract manners and so on and so forth. If that is the case, seems to me that that approach begins to break down—it may not entirely break down, but it begins to at least blur the line—between factual and value judgments, because now the value judgment is predictable and explainable in terms of facts about nature.

S: Yeah, i agree that there are certain things that we, as human beings, value, and the evolutionary psychologists are certainly engaged in an attempt to explain why we make those value judgments—again, the evolutionary "why" –

M: Right.

S: – What was the advantage for us having these value judgments?—so – but i'm not sure i agree that having a causal evolutionary "why" to those values makes them not values. Again, i said that would – for me, that's science ''informing'' the value judgment. But we still place a value on life, we place a value on ''human'' life, and then we get to – there is some point where you have to make a judgment call. For example, how much relative value should we place upon animal life versus human life?

M: Right.

S: How much relative value should we place upon the life of an embryo versus the life of a mother?

M: Now, i think you're – i think you're right.

S: Science can inform these questions, but it ultimately comes down to a value judgment –

M: Right.

S: – that is outside the realm of pure empiricism.

M: I think you're right, but the way that, therefore, i would see it is not as clear a line of separation between facts on one hand and values on the other. I would see some values as actually explainable entirely, or in large part, as the result of facts of nature—for example, again, the kind of society – the kind of animal that we are, actually. Other values, are, on the other hand – may be informed by facts discovered by science but not entirely explained by it, and then there may be—but probably there very likely are—certain areas of moral judgment, such as, probably, the one you just touched upon, that is, how do we treat other animals—that are, in fact, essentially entirely outside the explanations of evolutionary biology.

S: Right.

M: That, to me, brings up an interesting model, however, of sort of a continuum between fact and value, rather than a sharp distinction.

S: I agree, which is true in so much of, you know, intellectual distinctions.

M: Right.

S: It's a fuzzy continuum, not a sharp demarcation. But that doesn't mean—and that's actually another logical fallacy –

M: Right.

S: – the false continuum—that doesn't mean that there isn't a distinction to be made at the extremes –

M: Right.

S: – that there aren't certain questions that are pretty purely factual and other questions that are pretty purely, you know, value judgments or moral, if you want to use that term.

M: Yes, i think you're right. But the question that concerns us as skeptics and scientists and so on is, well, how many people are going to be happy with this idea of a continuum? Now, it may be that a lot of people are simply going to be very unhappy with the idea that there is any continuity at all –

S: Right.

M: – and, you know, how do we....?

S: You know, i agree, but i think that this is such a critical, core intellectual concept that i don't think you can water it down.

M: Right.

S: I think we just have to, through education, get people to think in a little bit more complex way, and to appreciate the concept of continuum, because i just can't imagine dispensing with it or trying to teach concepts with a false dichotomy –

M: Right.

S: – without giving people the appreciation for how to think about continuum with, you know, pseudoscience on one end and science at the other end, and with a continuum in between, for example. And, again, pretty much anything you can – any distinction you can think to make is really probably a continuum and not a sharp demarcation.

M: Right. Right.

S: So, i agree with you that that's a very common fallacy that people fall into, and i think we just need to force our way through with education, to make these kinds of decisions.

M: Which brings us to the question of what kind of an education? And, as you know, there have been – there's been a lot of talk about, we need more science education and we need more scientific education will help solving these kind of problems. And, over the years, i've become convinced that, actually, we don't need more science education—at least not the kind of science education we're doing at the moment.

S: Right, we need better standards of care.

B: Critical thinking skills.

M: Or different. I think we need quite a different kind of science education, because, still today, a lot of our science education is—especially in disciplines such as biology, much less so in areas such as physics—but biology is, to a large extent, you know, a factual – applied in a factual manner.

S: Right.

M: So, you know, really, an introductory course in biology, it's almost as charming as the yellow pages. I mean, you just, you know, start with A and end with Z. And there is very little that we do to actually train our students and our children toward the real objective to education, which i think is critical thinking abilities.

B: Yeah.

M: Now, it is true, of course, that you cannot think on an empty mind, so (''inaudible'') critical thinking about something, you actually do have to know ''some'' of the facts.

S: Right.

M: But i really don't believe the model that the facts – that the critical thinking is simply going to be the result of seepage through an ocean of facts. I don't think we need the ocean of facts.

S: No, yeah, i agree. Clearly, the critical thinking—theory, understanding, and logic—does not flow naturally from just memorizing a bunch of facts.

M: Right.

S: There are certainly people that know lots of facts but have no real understanding—like, oh, Creationists, for example –

M: Right. Yes.

S: – or anyone that we would think of as a crank, you know. We know these people. They have all this factual knowledge, but they just don't get it.

M: Right.

S: At the same time, empty theories—you know, you tend to drift off into La La Land if you don't have some actual empirical facts to anchor you to reality.

M; That's right.

S: So, it's an interaction, an intimate interaction between the two: theory and fact working together hand-in-hand. That's – that is what we need to teach kids, and that's why intelligent design and creationism is such a – would be such a critical blow—and ''has'' been, in fact, a critical blow—to the quality of our science education, 'cause it really undercuts that relationship.

M: Right. Yes. You cannot – it's hard to exercise critical thinking when one of the possibilities on the table is that a supernatural being just did it. "And, why did he do it?" "Well, because he felt like it."

S: Right.

M: "And, how did he do it?" "Well, who knows? He was supernatural."

S: Right.

M: Well, there's not much you can go on from that kind of premise, obviously.

S: You mention that you weren't a big fan of evolutionary psychology –

M: Right.

S: – which is basically the discipline of trying to explain human motivations, and beliefs, and morality in evolutionary terms. What's your beef with that?

M: Well, the idea, i think, is sound—meaning that – you know, the basic idea is that, look, human beings are, of course, one kind of animal, and, as all other animals on Earth, we have an evolutionary history. We evolved by natural selection, among other mechanisms, over a long period of time, and so it's only logical to think that natural selection did not shape just our physical bodies, but it also shaped some of—at least, in part—our mental abilities.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: We know that natural selection can shape and change the behavior of a lot of animals, so why not humans?

S: Right.

M: So, the basic premise, i think, is fundamentally sound. The problem is this: Since, of course, as we know, behavior, especially humanly interesting behaviors, don't fossilize. They don't leave much of a fossil record.

S: Right.

M: Since we don't have – (''glitch'') – and the solution is made worse by the fact that there are no close relatives—phylogenetically speaking, evolutionarily speaking—to human beings alive today. You know, our closest relatives are chimpanzees and bonobos, which have diverged from us several million years ago. That's not even close by any standard of so-called phylogenetic comparative analysis. So we don't have – of course, there ''were'' other species of humans, but they all, for one reason or another, died off some time ago.

S: Well, let me just pause there for a minute, though. Have you – did you read [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan Carl Sagan]'s book ''Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors''?

M: Yes, mm-hmm.

S: So, i mean, actually, his line of argument in that book was looking at the behavior of chimps and primates to see if we can infer anything about human psychological evolutionary ancestors.

M: Right. Right, well –

S: So, you're not saying that we can't get ''any'' value from looking at chimps and our closest relatives?

M: No. No, i'm not saying that we can't get any value, but i'm saying that we can get very little value, for the following reason, and with all due respect to Carl Sagan, but – the reason is this: At best, we have a phylogenetic group—you know, close relatives—of three or four species. Right? You know, if you count the two species of chimpanzees and one gorilla.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: And that's simply not enough for any serious comparative phylogenetic analysis. In fact, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetic_comparative_methods comparative phylogenetics] is – has been a booming discipline in evolutionary biology for the last twenty years, but all the best studies that have been done in comparative phylogenetic studies usually include a large number of species that are fairly closely related to each other—meaning, at a minimum, twenty or thirty. The reason for that is because then you can apply statistical techniques that have been, you know, developed over the last several years.

S: Right.

M: The problem, therefore, with the case of humans is not that it's impossible in – as a matter of principle, or that these are particularly unsound ideas. It just happens that we're pretty unlucky in terms of number of comparisons we can make.

S: Right.

M: Now, that said, of course, yes, one can look at the behavior of chimpanzees or bonobos—which, by the way, are very different from each other and equally –

S: Right.

M: equally related to us—but, and, of course, get some clues or some interesting ideas, some interesting suggestions, about how certain human behaviors, or certain human traits have evolved. So, if, in fact, we were doing – if evolutionary psychology were a branch of philosophy, ''informed'' by science—that is, it's a way to build plausible stories about the origin of certain human traits, and you know what? We cannot really test them rigorously, but these are plausible—then i'm perfectly happy with them. In fact, that's exactly what i said a few minutes ago in this broadcast when i was talking about possible ideas about the evolution of morality, and so on and so forth.

S: Right.

M: But, the problem comes to me because when evolutionary psychologists really make a hard pitch for the idea that theirs is, in fact, a quantifiable science of empirically testable hypotheses. Largely, though not entirely, it's not. And it's not, not because of their fault, but because of the reality of the situation. We only have a few species to compare, not enough to carry out statistical tests, and we have otherwise very little information about what human environments were like—especially social environments were like—during the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene Pleistocine]. We have next to nothing in terms of knowledge of what humans actually did, behaved, or thought at the time.

S: Right.

M: And so, you know, to me, evolutionary psychology, at the moment—and i don't see how this is going to change any time soon—is an interesting way of thinking about how certain human traits may have come about, but it is really not a science in the satisfactory sense of the term.

S: Now, there's one other method that you didn't comment on, that might be more plausible for evolutionary psychology, and that is looking at the phenotypic expression, if you will, throughout currently existing human populations. So, although we only have one species, we do have a number of races, we have a number of isolated cultures, and what evolutionary psychologists do is look for those psychological traits which seem to be universal among humans, despite vast disparities in culture, and that is one other window onto evolutionary psychology. What do you think about that?

M: Yeah, again, that is a really reasonable approach, and a reasonable approach that was used by evolutionary biologists in – when they study other species. In some sense, however, it suffers from the opposite problem from the one we were just talking about. So, if we're talking about long-term evolution, as we said a minute ago, we're missing a sufficient number of comparisons. If we're talking about very, very short-term evolution—so we're talking about evolution within ''homo sapiens''—perhaps we can actually understand something about differences between existing populations of humans. But, when it comes down to how those universals that you were talking about actually get involved—you know, were they the result of natural selection, or of other evolutionary processes—there are evolutionary processes that are not selective in nature, so, for example, you know, random drift is the result of simply fixing certain genes in certain small populations—we know that human beings—we know from molecular data—that the human population at certain times in its history was, in fact, small enough to cause that sort of random drift of characteristics—so, for any particular camp that we see today, we're not going to be in a position to know if it was the result of natural selection—as, of course, evolutionary psychologists will maintain—or the result of, essentially, historical accidents. And that is, by the way, the one-million-dollar question in evolutionary biology, you know, how do you discriminate between selective histories and random accidents.

S: Right.

M: The way, usually, again, biologists do it is when they either have a very detailed level of information in the fossil record, or when they have a lot of closely related species. I can tell you one example: Look, this may be a little – the example itself is a little technical, but it's, i think, very illuminating about the sort of things that we would like to be able to do in evolutionary psychology, and that, i think, at the moment, at least, we can't do. One of the best examples published in the last few years of competitive phylogenetic studies in non-human animals was the – a study that dealt with the question of why certain fish have – the male fish have a long tail, which seems to be attractive to females. So, these are swordtail fish, which you can buy for your aquarium. And, it has been known for a long time that females have a preference for males that have a long tail. Well, the question was this: Did the preference evolve first, or did the tail evolve first? And how are you going to answer that sort of question? You cannot answer it by looking at variation within the current species, because you will find males with longer or shorter tails, and you will find females with more or less preference for long tails, but you won't be able—since they're all mixed around—you can't tell which one came first.

S: Right.

M: The way they solved this problem—this was an extremely elegant piece of work—they looked at – these researchers looked at the fifteen or twenty most closely-related species to the swordtail fish. Some of these species have the tail—the very close relatives—and some of them don't. The males don't have the tail. So, if you trace back the evolution of the tail, you will find that, at one point, a certain, you know, number of million years ago, there were fish that were closely related to the swordtail which did not have the tail. Turns out, however, that their females have the preference. So, if you expose the female of some close relatives without the tail, to a male that has an artificial tail, they'll go for it. That is a very strong indication that, in fact, the female preference evolved before the tail –

S: Before the tail.

M: Right. And the tail evolved as a result of the fact that, for whatever reason—which we don't know at the moment—some females did have that preference. Now, that's a beautiful example of how you can figure out, in fact, how natural selection can favor certain not only morphological traits, such as the tail, but certain – but interacts with behavioral traits, such as female preference. That's exactly the sort of stuff that evolutionary biologists would ''die'' to have in human species.

S: Right.

M: And, the problem, again, is that, unfortunately, we don't have twenty or twenty-five species to play with.

S: Right. One more attempt to rescue evolutionary psychology.

M: (laughter) OK!

P: (laughter)

S: One more attempt, and that is: computer models, where you essentially take preferences and subject them to computer evolutionary models, and then see what those – what advantages—survival advantages—those psychological preferences result in –

M: Right.

S: – to see how—''statistically'', how—that matches actual human preferences and human behavior. What do you think about that approach?

M: Right. Again, that's a very reasonable approach, and, in fact, actually, among the ones we've discussed so far, is probably the best.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: That goes back to the game-theoretical models of evolution of morality, actually, that i was mentioning some time earlier.

S: Right.

M: Again, those are very suggestive. And, you know, whenever we do get a match between a reasonably-built mathematical model and a reasonably valid –

S: Calibrated data.

M: Yeah, calibrated data, then – of course, that's a very interesting finding. It, by itself, of course, is not conclusive, but it's a heck of an interesting find. Now, that said, there are caveats there, too. Number one: Those models do depend, a lot, on the assumptions that are embedded in the parameters. So, the costs, for example, to fitness.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: And those assumptions are often just a guess of the modeler. You know, they're difficult to just find independently from an empirical perspective. This is not just for humans. It's a problem with game-theoretical models in general. The other thing is, again, it's difficult to get very reliable or meaningful data from modern human populations, because modern human populations, unfortunately, are, by and large, so mixed up, in terms of cultural values and influences. And, also, it's very difficult to measure fitness in modern environments. And, in fact, one can make the argument that fitness in modern environments is essentially irrelevant to the question, because what we really want to know is, what were the fitness payoffs in the Pleistocene –

S: Right.

M: – you know, during the time in which these traits really did evolve? Those fitness payoffs and trade-offs may have been very, very different from the ones you can measure today in modern human populations. So, again, it's not hopeless, but what i would like to stress is that i think evolutionary psychologists have a heck of a long way to go, and they don't seem—at least, i don't want to make a blanket statement here, but a lot of them don't seem—to be particularly concerned (let's put it this way) about these sort of limitations, which have been pointed out to them by a variety of sources.

S: So, just to change gears a little bit, reading through your website—which, by the way, if i didn't mention it earlier, you have a website called [http://rationallyspeaking.org/ rationallyspeaking.org], which has a large number of essays covering evolutionary biology, creationism and intelligent design, philosophy, and you even venture out into the misty world of politics, which we don't deal with too much on this show—but i did notice that you wrote an essay about a topic which is – a humorous topic of interest to skeptics, about the Brights phenomenon fiasco a couple of years ago.

M: Oh, yes.

S: Now, just a very a quick history: A couple of years ago, a couple of humanists came up with the idea of essentially renaming those people who take a naturalistic worldview, who believe that there's nothing supernatural or paranormal in the world, and, rather than being labeled with the negative terms that we've been stuck with—''atheist'', and ''skeptic'' –

B: ''Cynic''.

S: – that have a lot of negative connotations—to come up with a positive term, modeling this after the gay community essentially branding themselves as "gay", to basically engender a more positive outlook. Now, you wrote an article a couple of years ago, in 2003, essentially praising this movement and this idea.

M: Mm-hmm.

S: It seems to me that it hasn't really taken off in the last couple of years. Has your opinion of this changed at all since then?

M: Yeah, this is one of those areas in which i'm afraid it was a good idea, but, as you said, it hasn't worked, and probably it hasn't worked partially for the very reasons that were pointed out by critics at the beginning, which is: The parallel with the gay community is in fact compelling. I think the analysis there is correct –

S: Right.

M: – that part of what helped—certainly not the entire thing, but part of what helped—creating a positive image for the gay community is, in fact, the decision to call themselves gay. However—and, therefore, you know, something like "brights" sounds like a bright idea, as initial reactions went—however, unfortunately, "bright", especially in a society like the American one, has a very different connotation than "gay". You know, nobody would disagree with being called "gay", no one would consider somebody, you know, a snob because they consider themselves gay.

S: Right.

M: The word "bright", on the other hand, of course, especially for certain people—and, i must say, especially in a country like the United States, with a long history of several different currents of anti-intellectualism—

S: Right.

M: – to consider oneself "bright", and actually vocally say so, it's obviously, if not the ultimate sin, it's pretty close to it. So, i suppose that's the reason the thing has not worked, and, therefore, i would like to concede that, yes, it probably wasn't exactly as bright an idea as it sounded at the beginning.

P: (laughter)

S: Yeah, it kinda struck us as misguided, and even other early supporters like Michael Shermer have backed off. He wrote a commentary saying that, basically, this was an attempt at rebranding –

M: Right.

S: – and it was done without any marketing research, and without – not even an email to the community saying, "Hey, what do you guys think about this?" Their defense was, well, we didn't want to do things by committee. It would have taken forever, and sometimes you just have to do things –

M: Right.

S: – to get them done. But, they really tried to impose a term onto a very – certainly independently-thinking group of people by fiat, and i thought it was doomed from the outset—especially, as you point out, you know, calling oneself "gay" is not an automatic offense to those people who are – to whom you are not referring, because they will not – you know, being ''not'' gay is not an insult.

M: That's right. But not being bright –

B: (''inaudible'')

P: (laughter) Exactly.

S: Not being bright – yeah, "You're not bright." That is – so, no one is ever going to buy into a term that's an implied insult to everybody else.

M: That's right. Yes.

P: That's right.

S: So, i thought, for that reason, it was kind of doomed to failure.

M: Yep.

S: It does bring up the interesting question, though: What ''do'' we call ourselves? I mean, one thing that's interesting that came out of [http://business.highbeam.com/6258/article-1G1-112409027/big-bright-brouhaha-empirical-study-emerging-skeptical the "bright" brouhaha] was that, you know what? No one came up with a good alternate.

M: Right.

S: I don't know if you have any thoughts on this.

M: Well, so, first of all, it depends on what you mean by "ourselves", because, as you know, the skeptic community, for example, does include some people who ''are'' believers in some sort of supernatural –

S: Yeah, exactly.

M: In that case, you know, i don't want to use the term, for example, "secular humanist", because those people certainly wouldn't consider themselves that way. So, i think my answer to that is two-fold: On the one hand, i don't think we need ''one'' term, because we do actually have a large – you know, several different kinds of constituencies that are – they join efforts in certain areas. Again, skepticism is one of them.

S: Right.

M: You don't have to have – be a nonbeliever in order to be a skeptic in most areas of, you know, science and pseudoscience and so on. The other thing is, when people ask ''me'' what i am, normally i just call myself a "humanist"—not even using the world "secular" because, at this point, there is essentially – there are no non-secular humanists, as far as i'm concerned, anyway.

S: There are no divine humanists?

M: There are no divine humanists. Even though, of course, as you know, that that's how the term originated in the Renaissance. There were ''only'' divine humanists. There were only, you know, religious humanists.

S: Right.

M: But, as far as i'm concerned, the term "humanist" is good enough to describe what i believe. I don't subscribe to any supernatural power out there, certainly none that is concerned with human affairs, and, therefore, i am optimistic about, despite all the evidence, about what human beings can do. And, so, the word "humanist" fits pretty well.

S: Right.

M: If we're not talking about metaphysics, then i call myself a skeptic, because i think it still is the best term, especially if you want to clarify, the skeptic is not necessarily somebody who always says "no". It's a positive skepticism in the sense of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume David Hume].

S: Right.

M: You know, a skeptic is somebody who entertains ideas and subjects them to rational and empirical scrutiny instead of either accepting them without hesitation or rejecting them outright.

S: I agree. I mean, i think – i'm happy to call myself a skeptic. Sometimes i'll modify it by saying i'm a scientific skeptic, but it's basically a skeptic. In terms of religious beliefs, i call myself an agnostic. But i've basically accepted the fact that, no matter what i call myself, i'm going to have to explain it a little bit.

M: Yes.

S: There is no one term that does not require some explanation. But, you know, that's the nature of this whole endeavor. There's a certain amount of complexity to our philosophy and our beliefs, and they defy a single, especially monosyllabic, label, right?

M: And, in fact, that's not a bad idea at all, because the fact that we have to explain ourselves as soon as we label ourselves is actually a good thing, because it implies that, look, part of what we are about is engaging in a discourse with people and educating people about certain aspects of thinking. So, yeah, it does require explanation, and i really wouldn't want to see a (''inaudible'') in which it wouldn't require an explanation.

S: Right.

M: It's – explanations are good, because they engage people in discussions.

S: Yeah, although, admittedly, the downside to that is when you're trying to market a magazine like ''Skeptical Inquirer'' or ''Skeptic'' –

M: Yes.

S: – or you're trying to sell an organization like the New England Skeptical Society, there is a branding—a marketing—issue here. You do want a term that's going to be looked at initially positively, or at least curiously, and not have an initial negative reaction.

M: Sure.

S: I think that, just culturally, historically, almost anything that would reasonably define us—and, again, as you point out, "us" is lots of different things, but with just very loose philosophical connections—that anything that would define us, you know, probably has some negative baggage that goes along with it.

M: True. But, then again, could be worse. I mean, i just got from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] this nice certificate that says that i'm a ''upraxifer''. Well, now, there's a term that is not going anywhere.

S: A upraxifer?

M: Yes.

S: Yeah. Paul Kurtz is, by the way, the founder of both the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and the Secular – the Council for Secular Humanist, and he has a long history of these really obscure terms.

M: That's right.

S: The original name for the ''Skeptical Inquirer'' –

B: ''Zetetic''. Exactly.

S: – was the ''Zetetic''.

M: Yeah. (laughter)

S: Recently, i was at a meeting with him where we were trying to figure out what to name our medical journal that looks at, you know, controversial and pseudoscientific claims, and he had another Greek name that nobody would know what it meant. And i can't even remember what it was. That's how bad it is. But –

M: And that's bad sign right there, that you can't remember it.

S: Yeah, that's a (''inaudible''). Yeah, it's a challenge.

M: Ditto.

S: That's our cross to bear—in the skeptical movement, and in humanism, and in philosophical naturalism, and the entire spectrum and everything in between.

M: Yep.

S: Well, Massimo, it was a pleasure. We greatly enjoyed you having on our podcast, the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. You were, in fact, our first guest—our first guest skeptic on the show.

M: I am honored.

S: We appreciate it.

M: I am honored. It was my pleasure.

S: Thank you. We hope to have you back sometime.

M: Yes, definitely.

B: Thank you, Massimo.

P: All right. Thank you, Massimo.

S: And this is Steven Novella. Until next week, this has been the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

Template:SGU episode list

2012-11-02T03:03:54Z

Cornelioid: Episode 3: {{i}} to {{Open}}

<noinclude>This template is used to display the list of full-length episodes on the [[Main Page]] and the [[SGU Episodes]] page. Additions and amendments to this template will be reflected on those pages.

Pages currently in progress should be followed by <code><nowiki>{{i}}</nowiki></code> to add the pencil icon, and pages that have sections open to other contributors to transcribe should be followed by <code><nowiki>{{Open}}</nowiki></code> to include the green arrow icon.

Pages that have been proof-read and verified by a contributor other than the author should be followed by <code><nowiki>{{tick}}</nowiki></code> to include the green tick icon.</noinclude>
{|style="margin:1em 3em"
|style="padding-right: 6em;white-space:nowrap" valign="top"|<big>'''2012'''</big>
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* [[SGU Episode 380]], Oct 27 2012 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 379]], Oct 20 2012 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 378]], Oct 13 2012 {{tick}}
* [[SGU Episode 377]], Oct 6 2012 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 376]], Sep 29 2012 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 375]], Sep 22 2012 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 374]], Sep 15 2012 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 373]], Sep 8 2012 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 372]], Sep 1 2012 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 371]], Aug 25 2012 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 370]], Aug 18 2012 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 369]], Aug 11 2012 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 368]], Aug 4 2012 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 367]], Jul 28 2012 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 366]], Jul 21 2012 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 365]], Jul 14 2012
* [[SGU Episode 364]], Jul 7 2012 {{tick}}
* [[SGU Episode 363]], Jun 30 2012 {{tick}}
* [[SGU Episode 362]], Jun 23 2012 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 361]], Jun 16 2012
* [[SGU Episode 360]], Jun 9 2012 {{tick}}
* [[SGU Episode 359]], Jun 2 2012
* [[SGU Episode 358]], May 26 2012
* [[SGU Episode 357]], May 19 2012
* [[SGU Episode 356]], May 12 2012
* [[SGU Episode 355]], May 5 2012
* [[SGU Episode 354]], Apr 28 2012
* [[SGU Episode 353]], Apr 21 2012
* [[SGU Episode 352]], Apr 14 2012
* [[SGU Episode 351]], Apr 7 2012
* [[SGU Episode 350]], Mar 31 2012 {{tick}}
* [[SGU Episode 349]], Mar 24 2012 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 348]], Mar 17 2012
* [[SGU Episode 347]], Mar 10 2012
* [[SGU Episode 346]], Mar 3 2012
* [[SGU Episode 345]], Feb 25 2012 {{i}}
* [[SGU Episode 339]], Jan 14 2012
* [[SGU Episode 338]], Jan 7 2012 {{tick}}

<big>'''2011'''</big>
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* [[SGU Episode 335]], Dec 17 2011 {{i}}
* [[SGU Episode 330]], Nov 11 2011 {{i}}
* [[SGU Episode 328]], Oct 29 2011
* [[SGU 24hr]], Sep 23-24 2011
* [[SGU Episode 320]], Aug 29 2011
* [[SGU Episode 312]], Jul 5 2011 {{i}}
* [[SGU Episode 308]], Jun 08 2011 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 287]], Jan 12 2011 {{Open}}
|valign="top" style=white-space:nowrap|<big>'''2010'''</big>
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* [[SGU Episode 271]], Sep 22 2010
* [[SGU Episode 260]], Jun 30 2010 {{i}}
* [[SGU Episode 252]], May 12 2010
* [[SGU Episode 245]], Mar 25 2010 {{i}}

<big>'''2009'''</big>
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* [[SGU Episode 220]], Oct 7 2009 {{i}}
* [[SGU Episode 216]], Sep 9 2009 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 185]], Feb 4 2009
* [[SGU Episode 184]], Jan 28 2009

<big>'''2008'''</big>
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* [[SGU Episode 165]], Sep 17 2008
* [[SGU Episode 156]], Jul 16 2008 {{tick}}
* [[SGU Episode 146]], May 7 2008
* [[SGU Episode 144]], Apr 23 2008 {{tick}}
* [[SGU Episode 140]], Mar 26 2008 {{i}}

<big>'''2007'''</big>
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* [[SGU Episode 123]], Nov 28, 2007 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 110]], Aug 28, 2007
* [[SGU Episode 109]], Aug 24, 2007
* [[SGU Episode 105]], Jul 25, 2007 {{i}}
* [[SGU Episode 103]], Jul 11, 2007
* [[SGU Episode 102]], Jul 3, 2007 {{i}}
* [[SGU Episode 100]], June 19, 2007 {{i}}
* [[SGU Episode 98]], June 6, 2007
* [[SGU Episode 97]], May 30 2007 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 89]], Apr 4, 2007 {{i}}
* [[SGU Episode 79]], Jan 24, 2007

<big>'''2006'''</big>
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* [[SGU Episode 62]], Sep 27 2006
* [[SGU Episode 47]], Jun 14 2006 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 46]], Jun 7 2006 {{i}}
* [[SGU Episode 38]], Apr 12 2006 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 31]], Feb 22 2006 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 27]], Jan 25 2006 {{Open}}

<big>'''2005'''</big>
----
* [[SGU Episode 13]], Sep 14 2005
* [[SGU Episode 12]], Sep 7 2005
* [[SGU Episode 11]], Aug 31 2005
* [[SGU Episode 10]], Aug 23 2005
* [[SGU Episode 9]], Aug 10 2005 {{tick}}
* [[SGU Episode 8]], Aug 2 2005 {{tick}}
* [[SGU Episode 7]], Jul 20 2005 {{tick}}
* [[SGU Episode 6]], Jul 7 2005 {{tick}}
* [[SGU Episode 5]], Jun 29 2005
* [[SGU Episode 4]], Jun 15 2005 {{i}}
* [[SGU Episode 3]], Jun 7 2005 {{Open}}
* [[SGU Episode 2]], Jun 1 2005 {{tick}}
* [[SGU Episode 1]], May 4 2005 {{tick}}
|}

SGU Episode 3

2012-11-02T03:01:45Z

Cornelioid: removed Keep-Off-The-Grass template

{{InfoBox
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|episodeDate = 7th June 2005
|episodeIcon = File:Massimo-outdoor.jpg
|bob = y
|perry = y
|guest1 = M: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massimo_Pigliucci Massimo Pigliucci]
|downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast06-07-05.mp3
|notesLink = http://www.theskepticsguide.org/archive/podcastinfo.aspx?mid=1&pid=3
|forumLink =
|}}

== Introduction ==

S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. Today is June 7th, 2005. This is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me this week are Perry DeAngelis –

P: Hello, everybody.

S: – and Bob Novella.

B: Good-evening.

S: We have a special guest this week, Massimo Pigliucci, who i will introduce in a moment. But, first, some follow-up from our discussion last week.

== News Items ==
=== Smithsonian ID Fiasco Follow-Up (0:00:32) ===
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/01/AR2005060101986.html The Washington Post: Smithsonian Distances Itself From Controversial Film]

S: Last week we talked about what is now being known as the Smithsonian Institution ID Fiasco. For those of you who listened, the Smithsonian Institution agreed to co-sponsor a film, which was being promoted by the [http://www.discovery.org/ Discovery Institute], which is an intelligent design creationism proponent. The film was called –

P: Shocking lack of judgment.

P: Shocking.

S: A shocking lack of judgment and, we agreed, it was extremely naïve.

P: Yep.

B: And, Steve, they're more than just proponents. I mean, they are the major arm –

S: Yes.

B: – of the movement.

S: That's correct. They exist to promote intelligent design creationism. The film was [http://www.privilegedplanet.com/ ''The Privileged Planet: The Search for Design in the Universe''], or ''Purpose in the Universe''. As in response to the Smithsonian Institution's plan there was a backlash of criticism from the scientific and skeptical communities –

P: Shocked.

S: – and, which has happened in many cases, as we have discussed in the past, when school boards or institutions, you know, fall prey to either creationism or intelligent design, or are being used for this purpose, the blogosphere jumps on it, the cyberspace skeptical and scientific community can react almost instantaneously. Mr. Randall Kremer, who was the public affairs agent for the Smithsonian Institute, was flooded with emails. They were essentially embarrassed out of co-sponsoring the film, which is, you know, a minor victory for skeptical activism.

B: I mean, they should have been embarrassed.

S: They should've been embarrassed. Here, i'm going to read to you the email that i personally sent to Mr. Kremer –

B: – which, i think, just put it over the edge.

S: Yes.

B: That was the, you know, the straw that made them cave.

S: Clearly it was instrumental –

P: No doubt. No doubt.

S: – in this victory—which is, i think, probably representative of the kind of scientific backlash that they received. So here's the email:

<blockquote>Mr. Kremer,

As a scientist and educator i was very dismayed to hear that the prestigious Smithsonian Institution was co-sponsoring the screening of a film promoting the pseudoscience of intelligent design, ''The Privileged Planet: The Search for Purpose in the Universe''. I strongly urge you to reconsider this. The Discovery Institute is a pseudoscientific organization dedicated to promoting religious belief as science. Intelligent design is a thinly-veiled religious belief system designed deliberately to remove any overt religious references from what is otherwise classic creationism. Its purpose is to infiltrate institutions like SI in order to convince the public that it has scientific credentials. Do not be so naïve, as unfortunately others before you have, in thinking that screening this film at SI will not be used by the Discovery Institute and other promoters of ID as scientific authoritative endorsement of ID. In fact, they are already doing so. You have stated that SI policy is such that events of a religious or partisan political nature are not permitted. I would add to that list egregious pseudoscience. Even if you accept the propaganda that ID is not a religious belief, you must acknowledge the consensus opinion of the scientific community that it is simply not science. Do not let SI be exploited to promote an anti-scientific agenda.</blockquote>

P: Hear, hear.

S: And, again, feedback like that, you know, very – within days forced, embarrassed the Smithsonian Institutiton –

P: Must've – he must've got thousands of those.

S: Must've gotten thousands. I hope so. I mean, we and the New England Skeptical Society did our part in spreading the word and encouraging people to write similar emails.

P: And the JREF, with their financial offer –

S: Yeah, well, Randi only $20,000 to SI to ''not'' show the film. They did not accept his offer –

P: Right.

S: – and, in fact, they declined to accept the $16,000 from the Discovery Institute. So they're getting no money.

B: Well, i –

S: They're showing the film anyway.

B: Steve, i don't think they actually declined to accept it. I think they gave it back.

S: Well – yes, fine. The returned it.

P: My understanding was they returned it. They returned it, yeah.

S: They returned the 16,000 and they removed their co-sponsorship of the film, so – The film is still being screened, you know, at a private function in the Smithsonian Institute, but it's not being sponsored, they're not accepting any funds from them, and clearly the imprimatur, the validation, of a prestigious scientific institution like the Smithsonian Institute has been removed from this film and from the Discovery Institute.

P: So it's 90% good. It's not 100%, it's 90%.

S: And i think that they'll be more wary the next time.

P: Right.

S: The real victory here is that this will not happen again. Hopefully.

P: What were they thinking?

S: What were they thinking?

P: Yeah. It's crazy. Crazy.

S: Just incredible.

== Science or Fiction (0:05:09) ==

S: We are going to also introduce a new segment this week, a segment called "Science or Fiction". In this segment, i am going to challenge my panel of skeptics. I have three news items—scientific breakthroughs, scientific news items—from the past week. I'm going to read you a brief summary of each of those items. The trick is that one of these items is not real. One of these items is fiction. The other two are genuine scientific breakthroughs, one is fiction. The challenge for you two this week is to try to decide which one is the fake one.

P: Mere child's play.

S: You have to bring all of your skeptical tools to bear to see if you can sniff out the fake. You can make your comments about each one as i present them, but wait until i've stated all three before you make your guess as to which one is fake. Are you ready?

B: Mm-hmm.

P: Sure.

S: Let's play.

B: Go for it.

S: [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7475-dolphins-teach-their-children-to-use-sponges.html Item number one]: Dolphins have been observed not only using tools, but also teaching tool use to their children. This is the first example of cultural tool use in a non-primate species. That's item number one.

P: Interesting.

S: Item number two: Astronomers have discovered an Earth-like planet orbiting a nearby star, 50 light years from Earth. This is the first Earth-sized planet discovered around another star, and astronomers say there are indications that the planet has an atmosphere. This is the best candidate so far for extraterrestrial life.

P: How far?

S: It's about 50 light years from our system.

P: All right.

S: [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050605183843.htm Item number three]: French scientists have discovered a way to keep water from freezing at hundreds of degrees below zero—near absolute zero. Those are your three items. What are your thoughts?

B: Wow. I've got problems with all of them.

S: I know. That's why they were chosen.

P: (laughter)

B: OK, the dolphins. You said one thing at the end, though, that piqued my interest there. You said that it's the first non-primate species shown to use tools?

S: Right. Well, cultural tool use. In other words, they're – it's not something that's just innate. They're actually teaching this to their children.

B: OK. 'Cause when you said that, i thought of – 'cause i know there are birds that will actually use tools to –

S: There are. And there're some birds that have some problem-solving skills.

B: Right.

S: But this is – they're actually –

B: It's cultural. There's actually a cultural thing.

S: They were observed teaching the tool use, yes.

B: OK, now i – i mean, since, of course, they don't have any hands or opposable thumbs, i assume they're not using their flippers. It would have to be their mouth. So maybe somehow they're using their mouth to manipulate an object they find on the sea floor. I don't think that's – i don't think that's a fact.

P: As for me, i'm gonna say that the first one is the truth. I recently, within the last week, saw a special, i think on the Discovery Channel. You know, it showed dolphins being very sophisticated, particularly a thing that they showed that really struck me was how two males would team up for a long time and keep a female hostage between the two of them. They'd swim around with her, never let her get very far from them –

B: I've heard of that.

P: – for months –

B: Months?

P: – months, they would keep her, so that she would only mate with them.

S: They're smart critters. They're vey smart critters.

B: Wow.

P: She'd try to get away, they'd attack her and really keep her corralled.

B: Now –

P: Anyway, it sounds accurate to me, the first one.

B: The second one has got to be false. We simply are not at the –

P: Yeah, it's too far.

B: No, not actually.

P: To see an atmosphere?

B: Fifty light years is not too far. It's the actual size that can't be right. Earth-sized planets we simply don't have the technology yet to ascertain the – to determine or to find planets that are Earth-sized. Typically, the only things we find are bigger than actually Jupiter –

P: Yeah.

B: – so we're talking thousands and thousands of times bigger than the Earth.

P: He went beyond that, too, Bob. He said that they had evidence that there was an atmosphere on it. How the heck –

B: Well, that's possible. I mean, you could – i think –

P: Not that size.

B: Well, using something –

S: All it requires is spectroscopic analysis –

B: Right.

S: – of the light coming from the atmosphere.

B: Spectroscopy would tell you if there were certain elements in the atmosphere. That's not what concerns me. It's the size, and that's just too small. We haven't – we're not close to detecting Earth-sized yet.

P: That one sounds false to me.

B: We will get there, though. We'll get there, but we're not there yet. Now, that – it doesn't matter what technique they're using. They could be using, you know, the gravitational disturbance of the parent star caused by the planet.

P: Wobbling.

B: Still, Earth-sized planets are just too small to create a nudge that's detectable yet.

S: Interesting.

P: Now, the last one, about the water. I mean, it's impressive –

B: Let me make one more comment about the second one. The other technique is actually—and it was recently perfected. They've actually – they claim to have discovered a planet that was the first planet discovered purely from the reflected light of the parent star, which was quite an achievement. But, still, that was a huge planet, a huge amount of light, relatively speaking.

S: So you don't think we're ready for this breakthrough yet.

B: No, not yet. We will definitely get there, and maybe relatively soon. Maybe, you know, maybe ten years, six years, but i've heard nothing approaching Earth-sized yet. And, the third one. Perry, did you want to comment on the water?

P: I was simply saying that it's impressive, but it simply seems more reasonable. Not precisely sure how you'd go about doing it.

S: Even though they were French scientists?

(laughter)

P: Yeah, well, we're suspending our disbelief for the moment.

B: At what temperature did you say, Steve? You mentioned near absolute zero.

P: Hundreds of degrees below zero.

S: Single digits.

B: Single degrees near absolute zero?

S: Yeah. Eight degrees was, i think, the figure given.

P: That's crazy.

B: That's – now that's liquid? Liquid water? I don't – no, i don't see that happening. No.

P: You gotta choose between the two of them.

B: I know. That's just too damn cold. I mean, even, you know, moving water can get colder than 32 by the fact that it's moving, will lower the freezing temperature a little bit, but to that degree? Maybe there's some sort of state that can get water into that makes it somewhat immune to freezing, but i can't imagine what that might be. Let's see. What – how could they – what could they possibly do to liquid water to maintain that state?

P: I have – i don't know.

B: – even that close –

P: Move it at an incredibly high speed?

S: So it's time to cast your votes.

B: OK. By definition –

P: Yeah, i'm still – i still think number two is less reasonable.

S: Perry votes for number two, the Earth-sized planet around another star. Bob?

B: Is what, true? Science or fiction?

S: As the fake one. As the fiction.

P: As the fiction. I'm writing that down as –

B: Now, there's two fiction. Aren't there two fiction?

S: No, there's one fiction. There's two are real.

P: Right. I believe that number two is fiction.

B: I could have sworn you said one real, two fiction.

P: Come on, Bob.

S: Two are science, one is fiction.

P: These rules are not complicated, Bob.

B: OK. Then, well, it's gotta be two. Two is definitely fiction.

S: So you both cast your vote for two.

P: Correct.

B: Too small.

S: OK. Well, you are both good skeptics. You got the correct answer.

P: (''inaudible'') we are!

S: You did very well.

P: Now, how did the scientist do that with the water?

B: I'm dying to know.

S: Well, we'll take them in order. Let's take them in order.

P: We'll take them in order.

S: A group of dolphins living off the coast of Australia teach their offspring to use their snouts with sponges while foraging for food in the sea floor. So, they actually put sponges on their noses to protect their – to protect them while foraging on the sea floor.

B: How do they do this?

S: Then they caught – They stick it on there. And then they caught mothers teaching this to their children.

P: Wow. Wow.

B: That's fascinating. So if they get, like, a –

S: You were right. Your intuition was right. It was something – they use their snout, not their flippers.

P: Smart critters.

B: Absolutely. So, if they get, like, a red sponge and stick it to their nose, they look kind of like clownfish? Is that how it works?

P: Bob.

S: I guess so.

P: Badum-bum.

S: This is by Krützen and colleagues. They analyzed thirteen, what they're calling "spongers", and 172 non-spongers, and concluded that the practice seems to be passed along family lines, primarily from mothers to daughters, for some reason.

B: That's very believable. I mean, they're just so intelligent. It seems –

P: Women do most of the work in the animal kingdom. That's why.

B: It seems very likely that they improvised some sort of tool use with their snouts. OK. Makes sense.

S: You're absolutely right with number two. I think that that is eventually going to be a headline –

P: Right.

S: – but it's just a few years too early.

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But Bob is just too up-to-date on the planet-hunting state of the art.

P: Hey, hey! I guessed it, too.

S: You did! But Bob had the details. It's true. You both sniffed that one out.

P: Thank you.

B: Water me! Come on, tell me, what's the (''inaudible'') do this?

S: OK. Here's the headline. You're gonna love it. "Nanotube water doesn't freeze, even at hundreds of degrees below zero."

B: Wow.

S: So, what French scientists have done is, they've – they are using the carbon nanotubes as a template, and the water molecules filling these tubes take on a similar structure, where the hydrogen and oxygen atoms form a lattice-like bond, and they – it will not freeze. It will continue to flow through this tube, even down to near-absolute temperatures.

B: That's fascinating.

P: Hum.

B: My god. It changes the molecular arrangement of the water?

S: Yeah, it actually changes the molecular arrangement of the water.

B: But can you still consider it liquid water, though?

S: You know, it's – that's a good question. I didn't say it remained a liquid. I said it didn't freeze.

B: A-ha! OK.

P: It's true.

S: It may actually be another state of water.

B: That makes more sense.

S: It may not technically be the same state as, you know, normal liquid water.

P: Sort of plasmic?

S: It's not a plasma.

B: No.

S: I mean, it's a new – and i don't know if they're actually going to call it a new ''phase'', but it definitely is a new ''state'' that water is in. And it is more like liquid than like ice. It certainly does not form ice crystals. It stays in this lattice formation and does not, you know, freeze into the normal crystalline structure that water ice has.

B: Yeah. It definitely doesn't sound like any of the other states of matter could account for that. I mean, you couldn't – it doesn't sound liquid to me, it doesn't sound – maybe it's a different type of solid. It's definitely not the other types, like plasma that Perry mentioned, or some of the more exotic ones, the Bose–Einstein condensates and the fermionic condensates. It can't be that, either. So, maybe it's a new type of solid for water. OK.

P: Interesting as heck.

S: Very interesting. It remains to be seen what the applications of this would be, but these nanotubes technology is, you know, very, very new and very, very active area of research, and this is just one example.

B: The applications are – appear to be just utterly mind-boggling for these nanotubes. I've never seen a discovery take off in quite the way that nanotubes has. I mean, just from the get-go, you know, the interest was worldwide, and since then they've found potential applications from computing to fibers to, maybe—to all sorts of applications—electronics. It's amazing how versatile this material appears to be. I think we'll be hearing a lot about nanotubes.

S: Very interesting. Well, it is now time to bring on our guest.

== Interview with Massimo Pigliucci (0:16:22) ==
[http://rationallyspeaking.org/ Dr. Pigliucci’s website]

S: With us this week is Dr. Massimo Pigliucci, who we simply call our friend (booming voice) Massimo.

P: (laughs)

S: Massimo is Associate Professor of Evolutionary Biology at SUNY Stony Brook in Long Island. He has published over 70 technical papers in evolution and botany. He's written seven books. His most recent non-technical book is ''Denying Evolution''. He's the author of a column in ''Skeptical Inquirer'' magazine called "Thinking About Science", and he's a frequent contributor not only to ''Skeptical Inquirer'' but also ''Skeptic'', ''Free Inquiry'', ''Philosophy Now'', and ''Philosopher's Magazine''. He has a doctorate in genetics from the University of Ferrarra in Italy, a PhD in botany from the University of Connecticut, and a PhD in philosophy from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, Massimo.

M: Thank you for having me. That list always sounds a little bit embarrassing.

(laughter)

S: Yeah, it always is embarrassing to hear somebody else read your own CV.

B: I wish i had such a list.

P: It's daunting, yes.

S: Thank you for being on our show this week. We appreciate it.

M: My pleasure.

S: So, i'm sure you've been following, in the news over the last few weeks, the recent activity of the – our friends, the intelligent design crew –

M: Yes, indeed.

S: – in Kansas City with the – We just got through talking about the Smithsonian Institute debacle –

M: Right.

S: – which, if you hadn't heard, they backed off from cosponsoring the Discovery Institute film.

M: Right. See, sometimes it works.

S: Sometimes it does work. Sometimes it does work.

P: Amen.

S: And, hopefully, people, you know, like the director of the Smithsonian, will think twice before, you know, falling for the Discovery Institute's coy offers in the future. So, what have you been doing recently, in terms of investigating or writing about the intelligent design crew?

M: Well, one thing that i've ''not'' been doing is to go to Kansas for those [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_evolution_hearings scam hearings that they organized with the local Board of Education].

S: Were you invited?

M: Yes, i was actually invited, and i followed the advice of Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education, more or less politely responding that i was – it wouldn't be a good idea for any scientists to participate.

P: So, Massimo, you agree with the basic, what i've been reading, then, in that the scientific community is really refraining from speaking at those hearings? You agree with that?

M: Right. I agree, and that's actually a change of heart for me, because in the past i've been involved in direct debates with creationists, intelligent design proponents, and so on and so forth. Now, under certain circumstances, those debates are actually fun, i guess, and may have a purpose, depending on the venue and the format and so on. But, definitely, in front of a school board, it's not – it doesn't seem like a good idea, because it really, in that case, does provide the other side with some legitimacy that they, frankly, don't deserve.

S: But do you – critics have said – critics of the decision of Eugenie Scott, and you, obviously, and of scientists that she advised, to boycott those hearings, have said that they already have legitimacy by the mere fact that they're before a school board, and then, therefore, shouldn't the mainstream scientific position be represented? What do you say about that?

M: Well, it depends on – i think, when we're talking about legitimacy, it depends on who bestows the legitimacy. It seems to me that one thing is to be invited by a school board, who as we know, is elected, and doesn't necessarily have much of an effect on either science, or education for that matter. Another thing is to be, on the other hand, given some credence from a professional biologist or a professional scientist, and that's what, i guess, we wanted to avoid in this case. Incidentally, the message was, in no uncertain terms, directed mostly to the school board. In other words, we told them that this was not an acceptable way of deciding these sort of matters.

S: Do you think that strategy worked?

M: I think it worked better than the alternative in this particular case. We'll see, of course, what the final outcome of the Kansas equation is.

P: Right.

M: Apparently, in Kansas, there is never a final outcome.

S: Right.

M: They can change their mind every other year.

P: It's true.

S: We thought it was interesting, the other – the unique or new aspect of this case was that the school board's decision, what they've said so far—now, they haven't rendered a final decision—went beyond just the creation–evolution issue to actually redefining science.

M: Which is, of course – right. Which is, of course, what the intelligent design side actually wants. Beginning with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_E._Johnson Phillip Johnson]'s early books, and certainly now with their chief intellectual [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A._Dembski Bill Dembski], what they want is, in fact, to redefine science. And that's an interesting point, which, i guess, we should spend a couple of minutes on. I have often said –i've debated Bill Dembski a couple of times, and we have exchanged opinions in writings as well, and here is Dembski's position, which sounds very reasonable, and i think it's one of the reasons it's so appealing to, sort of, people who don't have much of a philosophical background, even some scientists. His position is the following: He says, look, it used to be that anything – different kinds of potential causes for events were allowed as possible explanations, since the time of Aristotle—Aristotle included final causes, of course, to which intelligent design will belong—as acceptable kind of answers when one wonders about what's going on in the universe. And, then, Dembski says, Bacon came on—the British philosopher—came on the scene in the sixteenth century and decided, more or less arbitrarily, that final causes were out, that science was only a matter of ''how'' and not of ''why'', and, ever since, according to Dembski, science has been impoverished, and it's time to bring things back, essentially, to the wholeness of the Aristotelian approach. Now, that sounds very interesting, except that there are a couple of things that don't work. First of all, Aristotle never used final causes in a way that Bill Dembski will like to begin with.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: But that's a minor point. The major point is this: There was a very good reason why Bacon did – suggested what he suggested, which was, you realize that science wasn't going to get off the ground while it was still messing around with supernatural explanations. If one always had the supernatural card to play, any time that one was sort of running out of options, then science would simply never really be able to make progress in understanding the natural world.

S: Right.

M: So, that's why he said that those kinds of answers are out. Now, that worked very well for about a couple of centuries, especially in physics—Galileo, Newton, and so on. Then, Darwin came to play, and the game changed again, because, in fact, Darwin did contribute what—Dembski maintains—Darwin did reintroduce final causes in science, in biology. The question of why things happen is a fundamental question in evolutionary biology, and it is a perfectly fair question, which is pursued by biologists since Darwin. It's just that we answer in a different way. When we ask, "Why is the eye structured the way it is?", the answer is "Because natural selection favored certain variations on that structure, which worked better for the purpose of visualizing objects, and so on and so forth. In other words, there is a role for "why" questions in biology. It's just that the answer is grammatically different from the one that intelligent design proponents would want to see in – consider as questions in science.

S: Right. "Why" questions are essentially mechanism. "What is the mechanism of this phenomenon?"

M: The long-term mechanisms. So, the distinction here in biology is particularly clear, between "how" questions and "why" questions. So, i can ask those questions, for example, again, about the eye, and if i ask "How does it work?", then what i mean is, "What are the molecular, et cetera, mechanisms that allow the image to be – you know, the light to be captured, the image to be formed and to be sent to the brain, and so on and so forth?" But if i ask, "Why is the eye there to begin with?", then the answer is—regardless of specific mechanisms—the answer is, "Because there is an advantage for certain living organisms to be able to see what – you know, to perceive and understand their surroundings in terms of light waves.

S: Right. So, evolution is the ultimate "why" answer in – for biology, for biological "why" questions.

M: That's right.

S: Dembski and his crowd would like to reintroduce—essentially take us back before Darwin, before Galileo, before Bacon, even—and to reintroduce supernatural or divine causes into scientific questions. What they say is that by not allowing them we're essentially rigging the game against those types of answers.

M: Right.

S: What's your response to that?

M: Well, my response is that – suppose—i actually asked this question to Dembski at one point, at a meeting at the New York Academy of Sciences a couple of years ago—and the question is, OK, well, suppose, for a moment, that, in fact, we do allow intelligent design, in the sense that Dembski means, back into science. So suppose that i'm going to be, all of a sudden, the director of the National Science Foundation, and i decide to give, you know, three million dollars, over a period of five years, to Dembski—which is a pretty good grant by NSF standards—and i ask him, "What would you do? What sort of experiments would you set up? What sort of empirical hypotheses would you be able to test?" And he had no answer.

P: It's a good question.

M: Yeah! He had no answer.

S: Of course he has no answer. Yeah.

M: So, that is why, i think – so, i guess, to go back to your question, there are two different kinds of answers to "Why is it that the supernatural is out by definition?", essentially. One is the pragmatic one, the one that i just provided. You know, from the point of view of practical scientists, i want to see, you know, the proof is in the pudding. What is he going to do? Suppose that i do give you the money. What sort of hypotheses can you test? And, of course, the answer, again, is "None.", because, by definition, of course, the supernatural agent can do whatever the heck he wants –

S: Right.

M: – and, so, there's no way to predict, and therefore to test, what he's going to do. The other answer is, i think, a little deeper, and that's the philosophical answer—and, as you know, most scientists are not particularly well-versed in philosophy—but the philosophical answer is this: It is a matter of principle, once that you invoke the supernatural, you will not be able to propose empirically testable hypotheses. In other words, it's not just a matter of Bill Dembski's limited imagination, or anybody else's limited imagination, that at the moment we can't think of one, but give me enough time and i'll come up with one. A philosopher would argue that, as a matter of principle, if you abandon the position of methodological naturalism in science, you're dead. You're not doing science anymore. You're maybe doing something else—you might be doing theology, you might be doing some sort of philosophy—but you're certainly not doing science. And it is that difference, of course, between philosophical and methodological naturalism, that is very important, is apparently a little subtle for most people –

S: Right.

M: – but it's very important in terms of this debate.

S: Right, and they either don't get it or don't want to get it.

M: Right. (laughs) I do have the suspicion sometimes that they don't want to get it.

S: They don't want to get it. Because, you know, how many times can you explain it to them –

M: Right.

S: – and to really not understand it, you know, stretches the imagination.

M: Right. I mean, i can see how some people with no background in either science or philosophy might be a little puzzled by this difference, which, by the way, we should probably explain, but somebody like Bill Dembski, who does, actually, in fact, have a degree in philosophy, it's hard to believe that he doesn't understand the implications of that distinction.

S: Right, and i've had the same experience as you. If you remember, we were together at the [http://business.highbeam.com/5799/article-1G1-91236216/fourth-world-skeptics-conference-burbank-lively-foment World Skeptics Conference] a couple of years ago –

M: Yeah.

S: – and i had the opportunity to ask, i think it was Nelson –

M: Mm-hmm.

S: – a similar kind of question –

M: Yeah, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Nelson_(creationist) Paul Nelson].

S: – and what he said was that, you know, you cannot question the mind of god. If i say – which means, as you just said, any hypothesis about intelligent design—about the intelligent designer—that you could seek to test or falsify is rendered unfalsifiable by that statement –

M: Right.

S: – because you can't ask the question, "What would, or what should, the world look like if it were designed by an intelligent designer?", because there's no answer to that question. The answer is, "It looks like whatever it looks like." –

M: Right.

S: – and, therefore, it's not falsifiable, and, therefore, not science.

M: Correct. There is –

B: But couldn't –

S: You know they have to understand that.

M: Right. There is a caveat there—which, of course, is something that Dembski either as a matter of – either on purpose or because he really doesn't see the difference, he insists on this point—he says, "But, look: There's plenty of good science that is done under the assumption of intelligent design." He talks about forensic science, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and so on and so forth. And, of course, he's right: That kind of science—archeology, for example—''is'' done under the presumption of intelligent design. But, in those cases, you can, in fact, question the mind of the designer.

S: Right.

M: In fact, the whole point is that you do know, or at least make hypotheses about –

B: Excellent.

M: – what the designer is doing and why –

S: Right.

M: If you couldn't do that, then there would be no archeology, no SETI –

S: Right,

M: – and no forensic science.

S: Exactly.

P: Exactly.

B: That's a good point.

M: And, so, ''intelligent design'' is a little too broad of a term in –

S: So it's a false analogy on their part.

M: That's right. Exactly. It is.

S: I've always – it's always struck me, too, that it's one enormous logical fallacy. Now, we keep track of logical fallacies on the show. We actually have our [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/resources/logicalfallacies.aspx top 20 list of logical fallacies] –

M: (laugter)

S: – which you can read on our website. It's at [http://www.theness.com/ theness.com]. There's a couple that they're using here. One, of course, is the argument from ignorance: "We don't know something, therefore god did it."

M: Right.

S: And we – specifically, in this type of explanation, you can also call that the "god of the gaps" argument.

M: Right.

S: But it's also confusing ''currently unexplained'' with ''unexplainable''. Again, that's sort of, "The current gap of knowledge, that's what god did."

M: Right.

S: And, as that gap retreats, and the ever-advancing, you know, knowledge of science, god still fills whatever gaps and crevices are currently unexplained as if they never will be explained –

M: Right.

S: – even though, tomorrow, they ''are'' explained.

M: I would make, also, an even third-level distinction. That is, there are two kinds of unexplainable questions or phenomena.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: There is the impossibility to explain something because, in fact, there is, essentially, no explanation within the realm of natural laws—which is the sort of unexplainable phenomenon that Dembski likes—but there is also what philosophers call ''epistemic unexplainability''. There may be some things out there that are explainable in the sense that there ''is'' an answer somewhere, but, because of the limitations, both current and for possibly future human understanding and human reason, we might never be able to get the answer.

S: Right.

M: So, one possible –

B: It's like a dog –

M: Yes.

B: It's like a dog trying to understand calculus.

M: That's right. Exactly.

B: It's never going to happen.

M: And there are some interesting possible examples within science. So, for example, the question of the origin of life ''may'' fall into that category—not because the origin of life is unexplainable in principle—i don't think it is—and, of course, we ''may'' explain it. I mean, you know, next week, we may see an article in ''Science'' or ''Nature'', somebody has actually come up with the right answer. But it may also be the sort of thing that is epistemically unexplainable by human beings simply because there's very, if any, clues left, essentially. You know, something that happened four billion years ago. There are no fossils. We have very little understanding, or way to get decent information, about what the conditions actually were. So we might never be able to answer that question. But that—even that, even granting that—it still doesn't bring you any closer to the necessity of a supernatural explanation.

S: Right, right. Once again, we are speaking to Massimo Pigliucci, philosopher and evolutionary scientist, and author of many articles and books. We've been talking about the intelligent design phenomenon and proponents of intelligent design, which brings us, really, to the philosophical underpinnings of science itself—What is the difference between science and religion, philosophically?—and we've brought up some terms like "philosophical naturalism"—our organization, for example, advocates what i would call "scientific skepticism"—and there are some subtle differences between these types of philosophies. You've written several reviews and articles, for example, criticizing [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould Stephen Jay Gould]'s summary, or summation –

M: Right.

S: – of the relationship between science and religion.

M: Right.

S: Gould came up with this idea of "non-overlapping magesteria", in which both science and religion occupy different –

B: Domains of knowledge.

S: – intellectual domains—right, different domains of knowledge he calls "magesteria"—and they each serve their purpose. You're very – you have been very critical of this idea.

M: Well, for plenty of reasons. I mean, there's not – i should probably start out by saying that i am not a Gould-hater like some of my colleagues. I really like some of the stuff that Stephen Gould wrote, both technical and non-technical, and i really dislike some of the other stuff. In particular, about religion, there are a couple of things that really, i think, are worth considering in that context. First of all, Gould did not come up with the basic idea that you mention, although he did come up with the fancy name, but that idea goes back, essentially, all the way to St. Augustine.

S: Yes, and he acknowledges that, to be fair, yeah.

M: Right. Now, the basic idea, however, is, i think, a bit misleading, for two reasons: Number one, because it hinges on the definition of "god", which Gould leaves kind of up in the air for most of that book. At one point, he finally has to come to terms with the fact that, well, in fact, there are some conceptions of god that do go head-on against science. For example, if you are a Young Earth Creationist who believes that there was a worldwide flood four thousand years old – ago, then, i'm sorry, science just tells you you're wrong. And, if your belief in god hinges on that particular belief then you're dead in the water. So even Gould had to acknowledge that it really depends on what you mean by "god" and what particular version of "god" you're espousing, which is, of course, very different from the question of science. There are no different varieties of science that we're talking about here. It's either you're – you know, scientists disagree on specific theories, but there is, essentially, one body of methods and knowledge that we call "science". On the other hand, religion is an incredibly heterogeneous body of beliefs. So, one has to, at least, to be clear on what one means, because it sounds very nice, it sounds very ecumenical, to say, "Well, science and religion can be different areas of expertise, and let's just keep them separate." Well, it depends. But even within the kind of religion that does not have any direct conflict with science—So, suppose you're, you know, a progressive Catholic. You know, the Pope. The previous Pope, John Paul II, as we know, did acknowledge that the Catholic Church does not have much of a problem—have a problem at all—with the modern theory of – biological theory of evolution.

S: Right.

M: OK. Well, that sounds very good. That still does not amount to say that there's no overlap at all between the two areas of intellectual endeavor. For one thing, because part of science is now getting, actually, to the point of providing explanations, at least tentative explanations, for where religious beliefs and morality come from to begin with.

P: Mm-hmm.

M: Now, i'm not a particular defender of evolutionary psychology, either, but the ideas are out there. And the fact that the ideas are out there means that science is, in fact, beginning to encroach in the area – on the area of morality, and religious beliefs, and so on and so forth. Should we kick it out, just because we feel uncomfortable about it, or because some people feel uncomfortable about it? I don't think so. That's not to say that current ideas about evolution are more likely or necessarily correct, but it's just that it is worth exploring as a possibility.

S: Right.

M: And, lastly, there – the last thing that really, i guess, prompted my disagreement with Gould, is that he seems to somehow have forgotten that there is a whole different area of human knowledge, or human intellectual endeavor, that greatly overlaps, and often contradicts, some religious positions, and that's, of course, philosophy—particularly moral philosophy. So, to say, as he says in that book, that morality is the province of religion—well, wait a minute. Actually, morality is the province of a lot of different kinds of activities—as i said a minute ago, even possibly science—but certainly not ''only'' religion. So, in other words, the situation, it seems to me, is a lot more complicated than the nice and, you know, neat distinction that Gould was trying to make.

S: Yeah, i agree. He did see – he did go out of his way to sort of overstate the historical non-overlapping of science and religion, and it struck me that you have to sort of, you know, turn a blind eye to all of the cases of – you know, religion, essentially, completely dominated science, was ''the'' explanation for the natural world, and has had to retreat territory, if you will, to scientific explanations and the institution of science. But, do you think you could, you know, rescue a legitimate point from Gould's position by saying that what he's describing is not the historical relationship between science and religion but what the relationship should be—in other words, that religion ''should'' avoid overlapping with science and ''should'' restrict itself to the domains of morality and to the great unanswerable questions of existence that are inherently not explainable or not explorable by scientific methods? What would you say to that?

M: I think that is a fair point. However, the question then can also be asked the other way around: Should science be restricted from inquiries into morality and religious beliefs and so on?

S: Well, you could – as we were saying with the intelligent design thing, there are some questions that are simply outside the realm of science –

M: Right.

S: – and you can argue that, well, if, once you're outside the realm of science by, you know, methodological naturalism, then, you know, that is the domain of faith. You're free to have any arbitrary belief or faith that you choose, because these are questions that are inherently outside of the scientific realm. For example, you may – some people believe that the question of whether or not god exists—or any power or entity or ''thing'' that is outside of the natural laws of the universe, not bound by nature, if you will—that that's an inherently unanswerable question by science and therefore is in the realm of faith.

M: Right.

S: Would you agree with that non-overlapping aspect?

M: Right. Yes, i would agree with that nonoverlapping – i'm afraid, however, that that would leave very little outside, in fact, of the realm of science, and i'm perfectly happy – if people are happy with that conclusion –

S: Yes.

M: – i'm fine to go along with it. But the kind of questions—the kind of encroaching of science into the territory of religion and morality that i was referring to—does not deal directly with the question of the existence of god—which, you're right, it's by definition outside the realm of science. But there are other things that are close enough to really bother a lot of religious believers that science is now beginning to encroach upon.

S: Right.

M: So, suppose that we do come up, eventually, with a very reasonable, very serious theory of how morality—a sense of morality, at least, and even possibly some certain specific moral rules—evolved by natural selection among primates and (''inaudible'') you know, groups or societies.

S: Right.

M: Well, you know, is that encroaching on religion, or not?

S: Well, this is what i would say to this—and this is – i've certainly heard humanists and others take this approach—that science deals with statements of fact—what is the state of history, the state of nature—whereas morality deals with statements of value. So, whenever you have to make a value judgment, that is a question that can be informed—factually informed—by science, but cannot be made scientifically.

M: Mm-hmm.

S: So, that is a very practical and real place to draw the line—again, to map out these domains.

M: Right. So, what you're referring to is what, in philosophy, is known as the naturalistic fallacy, which was discussed originally by David Hume. The idea was, in fact, that you cannot go from what ''is'' to what ''ought to be'' –

S: Right.

M: – from a matter of fact to a matter of value. OK. Now, i have actually taken that position myself in the past and, quite frankly, at this moment i keep vesseling back and forth.

S: Right.

M: So, don't necessarily hold me to what i'm about to say in a few months, because i may change my mind again. But, there is some interesting situations here that need to be discussed. So, while i will certainly grant that there are – there is a large area of specific moral decisions that are very far from anything that science can say at the moment, there are some particular moral values—particular moral rules—that seem to be, in fact, fairly straightforwardly explainable by science. For example, there is a whole area now in philosophy of ethics and philosophy of morality that looks at the use of optimality models—game theoretical models—to predict what sort of behavior would be optimal in a group of individuals, given certain constraints. This is a sort of mathematical modeling that has been done in evolutionary biology for a long time, but until recently, it has not been applied, in fact, directly to questions of human morality. Well, it turns out that when people have—in the last three or four years, there've been a series of papers in major science magazines—when people have, in fact, applied that kind of game-theoretical approach to realistic situations and have actually tested their predictions, with actual real human beings, the funny thing that turned out is that the models were able to predict, very closely, what real human beings would consider – how they would act and what they would consider moral or nonmoral. That raises the question that some kinds of human behavior—human morality, such as our attitude toward killing people, or our attitude toward cheating, and so on and so forth—those actually may be a matter of fact, meaning that they are the expected outcome of the evolution of a society of a certain kind of (''inaudible''), certain kinds of animals, capable of thinking in fairly abstract manners and so on and so forth. If that is the case, seems to me that that approach begins to break down—it may not entirely break down, but it begins to at least blur the line—between factual and value judgments, because now the value judgment is predictable and explainable in terms of facts about nature.

S: Yeah, i agree that there are certain things that we, as human beings, value, and the evolutionary psychologists are certainly engaged in an attempt to explain why we make those value judgments—again, the evolutionary "why" –

M: Right.

S: – What was the advantage for us having these value judgments?—so – but i'm not sure i agree that having a causal evolutionary "why" to those values makes them not values. Again, i said that would – for me, that's science ''informing'' the value judgment. But we still place a value on life, we place a value on ''human'' life, and then we get to – there is some point where you have to make a judgment call. For example, how much relative value should we place upon animal life versus human life?

M: Right.

S: How much relative value should we place upon the life of an embryo versus the life of a mother?

M: Now, i think you're – i think you're right.

S: Science can inform these questions, but it ultimately comes down to a value judgment –

M: Right.

S: – that is outside the realm of pure empiricism.

M: I think you're right, but the way that, therefore, i would see it is not as clear a line of separation between facts on one hand and values on the other. I would see some values as actually explainable entirely, or in large part, as the result of facts of nature—for example, again, the kind of society – the kind of animal that we are, actually. Other values, are, on the other hand – may be informed by facts discovered by science but not entirely explained by it, and then there may be—but probably there very likely are—certain areas of moral judgment, such as, probably, the one you just touched upon, that is, how do we treat other animals—that are, in fact, essentially entirely outside the explanations of evolutionary biology.

S: Right.

M: That, to me, brings up an interesting model, however, of sort of a continuum between fact and value, rather than a sharp distinction.

S: I agree, which is true in so much of, you know, intellectual distinctions.

M: Right.

S: It's a fuzzy continuum, not a sharp demarcation. But that doesn't mean—and that's actually another logical fallacy –

M: Right.

S: – the false continuum—that doesn't mean that there isn't a distinction to be made at the extremes –

M: Right.

S: – that there aren't certain questions that are pretty purely factual and other questions that are pretty purely, you know, value judgments or moral, if you want to use that term.

M: Yes, i think you're right. But the question that concerns us as skeptics and scientists and so on is, well, how many people are going to be happy with this idea of a continuum? Now, it may be that a lot of people are simply going to be very unhappy with the idea that there is any continuity at all –

S: Right.

M: – and, you know, how do we....?

S: You know, i agree, but i think that this is such a critical, core intellectual concept that i don't think you can water it down.

M: Right.

S: I think we just have to, through education, get people to think in a little bit more complex way, and to appreciate the concept of continuum, because i just can't imagine dispensing with it or trying to teach concepts with a false dichotomy –

M: Right.

S: – without giving people the appreciation for how to think about continuum with, you know, pseudoscience on one end and science at the other end, and with a continuum in between, for example. And, again, pretty much anything you can – any distinction you can think to make is really probably a continuum and not a sharp demarcation.

M: Right. Right.

S: So, i agree with you that that's a very common fallacy that people fall into, and i think we just need to force our way through with education, to make these kinds of decisions.

M: Which brings us to the question of what kind of an education? And, as you know, there have been – there's been a lot of talk about, we need more science education and we need more scientific education will help solving these kind of problems. And, over the years, i've become convinced that, actually, we don't need more science education—at least not the kind of science education we're doing at the moment.

S: Right, we need better standards of care.

B: Critical thinking skills.

M: Or different. I think we need quite a different kind of science education, because, still today, a lot of our science education is—especially in disciplines such as biology, much less so in areas such as physics—but biology is, to a large extent, you know, a factual – applied in a factual manner.

S: Right.

M: So, you know, really, an introductory course in biology, it's almost as charming as the yellow pages. I mean, you just, you know, start with A and end with Z. And there is very little that we do to actually train our students and our children toward the real objective to education, which i think is critical thinking abilities.

B: Yeah.

M: Now, it is true, of course, that you cannot think on an empty mind, so (''inaudible'') critical thinking about something, you actually do have to know ''some'' of the facts.

S: Right.

M: But i really don't believe the model that the facts – that the critical thinking is simply going to be the result of seepage through an ocean of facts. I don't think we need the ocean of facts.

S: No, yeah, i agree. Clearly, the critical thinking—theory, understanding, and logic—does not flow naturally from just memorizing a bunch of facts.

M: Right.

S: There are certainly people that know lots of facts but have no real understanding—like, oh, Creationists, for example –

M: Right. Yes.

S: – or anyone that we would think of as a crank, you know. We know these people. They have all this factual knowledge, but they just don't get it.

M: Right.

S: At the same time, empty theories—you know, you tend to drift off into La La Land if you don't have some actual empirical facts to anchor you to reality.

M; That's right.

S: So, it's an interaction, an intimate interaction between the two: theory and fact working together hand-in-hand. That's – that is what we need to teach kids, and that's why intelligent design and creationism is such a – would be such a critical blow—and ''has'' been, in fact, a critical blow—to the quality of our science education, 'cause it really undercuts that relationship.

M: Right. Yes. You cannot – it's hard to exercise critical thinking when one of the possibilities on the table is that a supernatural being just did it. "And, why did he do it?" "Well, because he felt like it."

S: Right.

M: "And, how did he do it?" "Well, who knows? He was supernatural."

S: Right.

M: Well, there's not much you can go on from that kind of premise, obviously.

S: You mention that you weren't a big fan of evolutionary psychology –

M: Right.

S: – which is basically the discipline of trying to explain human motivations, and beliefs, and morality in evolutionary terms. What's your beef with that?

M: Well, the idea, i think, is sound—meaning that – you know, the basic idea is that, look, human beings are, of course, one kind of animal, and, as all other animals on Earth, we have an evolutionary history. We evolved by natural selection, among other mechanisms, over a long period of time, and so it's only logical to think that natural selection did not shape just our physical bodies, but it also shaped some of—at least, in part—our mental abilities.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: We know that natural selection can shape and change the behavior of a lot of animals, so why not humans?

S: Right.

M: So, the basic premise, i think, is fundamentally sound. The problem is this: Since, of course, as we know, behavior, especially humanly interesting behaviors, don't fossilize. They don't leave much of a fossil record.

S: Right.

M: Since we don't have – (''glitch'') – and the solution is made worse by the fact that there are no close relatives—phylogenetically speaking, evolutionarily speaking—to human beings alive today. You know, our closest relatives are chimpanzees and bonobos, which have diverged from us several million years ago. That's not even close by any standard of so-called phylogenetic comparative analysis. So we don't have – of course, there ''were'' other species of humans, but they all, for one reason or another, died off some time ago.

S: Well, let me just pause there for a minute, though. Have you – did you read [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan Carl Sagan]'s book ''Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors''?

M: Yes, mm-hmm.

S: So, i mean, actually, his line of argument in that book was looking at the behavior of chimps and primates to see if we can infer anything about human psychological evolutionary ancestors.

M: Right. Right, well –

S: So, you're not saying that we can't get ''any'' value from looking at chimps and our closest relatives?

M: No. No, i'm not saying that we can't get any value, but i'm saying that we can get very little value, for the following reason, and with all due respect to Carl Sagan, but – the reason is this: At best, we have a phylogenetic group—you know, close relatives—of three or four species. Right? You know, if you count the two species of chimpanzees and one gorilla.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: And that's simply not enough for any serious comparative phylogenetic analysis. In fact, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetic_comparative_methods comparative phylogenetics] is – has been a booming discipline in evolutionary biology for the last twenty years, but all the best studies that have been done in comparative phylogenetic studies usually include a large number of species that are fairly closely related to each other—meaning, at a minimum, twenty or thirty. The reason for that is because then you can apply statistical techniques that have been, you know, developed over the last several years.

S: Right.

M: The problem, therefore, with the case of humans is not that it's impossible in – as a matter of principle, or that these are particularly unsound ideas. It just happens that we're pretty unlucky in terms of number of comparisons we can make.

S: Right.

M: Now, that said, of course, yes, one can look at the behavior of chimpanzees or bonobos—which, by the way, are very different from each other and equally –

S: Right.

M: equally related to us—but, and, of course, get some clues or some interesting ideas, some interesting suggestions, about how certain human behaviors, or certain human traits have evolved. So, if, in fact, we were doing – if evolutionary psychology were a branch of philosophy, ''informed'' by science—that is, it's a way to build plausible stories about the origin of certain human traits, and you know what? We cannot really test them rigorously, but these are plausible—then i'm perfectly happy with them. In fact, that's exactly what i said a few minutes ago in this broadcast when i was talking about possible ideas about the evolution of morality, and so on and so forth.

S: Right.

M: But, the problem comes to me because when evolutionary psychologists really make a hard pitch for the idea that theirs is, in fact, a quantifiable science of empirically testable hypotheses. Largely, though not entirely, it's not. And it's not, not because of their fault, but because of the reality of the situation. We only have a few species to compare, not enough to carry out statistical tests, and we have otherwise very little information about what human environments were like—especially social environments were like—during the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene Pleistocine]. We have next to nothing in terms of knowledge of what humans actually did, behaved, or thought at the time.

S: Right.

M: And so, you know, to me, evolutionary psychology, at the moment—and i don't see how this is going to change any time soon—is an interesting way of thinking about how certain human traits may have come about, but it is really not a science in the satisfactory sense of the term.

S: Now, there's one other method that you didn't comment on, that might be more plausible for evolutionary psychology, and that is looking at the phenotypic expression, if you will, throughout currently existing human populations. So, although we only have one species, we do have a number of races, we have a number of isolated cultures, and what evolutionary psychologists do is look for those psychological traits which seem to be universal among humans, despite vast disparities in culture, and that is one other window onto evolutionary psychology. What do you think about that?

M: Yeah, again, that is a really reasonable approach, and a reasonable approach that was used by evolutionary biologists in – when they study other species. In some sense, however, it suffers from the opposite problem from the one we were just talking about. So, if we're talking about long-term evolution, as we said a minute ago, we're missing a sufficient number of comparisons. If we're talking about very, very short-term evolution—so we're talking about evolution within ''homo sapiens''—perhaps we can actually understand something about differences between existing populations of humans. But, when it comes down to how those universals that you were talking about actually get involved—you know, were they the result of natural selection, or of other evolutionary processes—there are evolutionary processes that are not selective in nature, so, for example, you know, random drift is the result of simply fixing certain genes in certain small populations—we know that human beings—we know from molecular data—that the human population at certain times in its history was, in fact, small enough to cause that sort of random drift of characteristics—so, for any particular camp that we see today, we're not going to be in a position to know if it was the result of natural selection—as, of course, evolutionary psychologists will maintain—or the result of, essentially, historical accidents. And that is, by the way, the one-million-dollar question in evolutionary biology, you know, how do you discriminate between selective histories and random accidents.

S: Right.

M: The way, usually, again, biologists do it is when they either have a very detailed level of information in the fossil record, or when they have a lot of closely related species. I can tell you one example: Look, this may be a little – the example itself is a little technical, but it's, i think, very illuminating about the sort of things that we would like to be able to do in evolutionary psychology, and that, i think, at the moment, at least, we can't do. One of the best examples published in the last few years of competitive phylogenetic studies in non-human animals was the – a study that dealt with the question of why certain fish have – the male fish have a long tail, which seems to be attractive to females. So, these are swordtail fish, which you can buy for your aquarium. And, it has been known for a long time that females have a preference for males that have a long tail. Well, the question was this: Did the preference evolve first, or did the tail evolve first? And how are you going to answer that sort of question? You cannot answer it by looking at variation within the current species, because you will find males with longer or shorter tails, and you will find females with more or less preference for long tails, but you won't be able—since they're all mixed around—you can't tell which one came first.

S: Right.

M: The way they solved this problem—this was an extremely elegant piece of work—they looked at – these researchers looked at the fifteen or twenty most closely-related species to the swordtail fish. Some of these species have the tail—the very close relatives—and some of them don't. The males don't have the tail. So, if you trace back the evolution of the tail, you will find that, at one point, a certain, you know, number of million years ago, there were fish that were closely related to the swordtail which did not have the tail. Turns out, however, that their females have the preference. So, if you expose the female of some close relatives without the tail, to a male that has an artificial tail, they'll go for it. That is a very strong indication that, in fact, the female preference evolved before the tail –

S: Before the tail.

M: Right. And the tail evolved as a result of the fact that, for whatever reason—which we don't know at the moment—some females did have that preference. Now, that's a beautiful example of how you can figure out, in fact, how natural selection can favor certain not only morphological traits, such as the tail, but certain – but interacts with behavioral traits, such as female preference. That's exactly the sort of stuff that evolutionary biologists would ''die'' to have in human species.

S: Right.

M: And, the problem, again, is that, unfortunately, we don't have twenty or twenty-five species to play with.

S: Right. One more attempt to rescue evolutionary psychology.

M: (laughter) OK!

P: (laughter)

S: One more attempt, and that is: computer models, where you essentially take preferences and subject them to computer evolutionary models, and then see what those – what advantages—survival advantages—those psychological preferences result in –

M: Right.

S: – to see how—''statistically'', how—that matches actual human preferences and human behavior. What do you think about that approach?

M: Right. Again, that's a very reasonable approach, and, in fact, actually, among the ones we've discussed so far, is probably the best.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: That goes back to the game-theoretical models of evolution of morality, actually, that i was mentioning some time earlier.

S: Right.

M: Again, those are very suggestive. And, you know, whenever we do get a match between a reasonably-built mathematical model and a reasonably valid –

S: Calibrated data.

M: Yeah, calibrated data, then – of course, that's a very interesting finding. It, by itself, of course, is not conclusive, but it's a heck of an interesting find. Now, that said, there are caveats there, too. Number one: Those models do depend, a lot, on the assumptions that are embedded in the parameters. So, the costs, for example, to fitness.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: And those assumptions are often just a guess of the modeler. You know, they're difficult to just find independently from an empirical perspective. This is not just for humans. It's a problem with game-theoretical models in general. The other thing is, again, it's difficult to get very reliable or meaningful data from modern human populations, because modern human populations, unfortunately, are, by and large, so mixed up, in terms of cultural values and influences. And, also, it's very difficult to measure fitness in modern environments. And, in fact, one can make the argument that fitness in modern environments is essentially irrelevant to the question, because what we really want to know is, what were the fitness payoffs in the Pleistocene –

S: Right.

M: – you know, during the time in which these traits really did evolve? Those fitness payoffs and trade-offs may have been very, very different from the ones you can measure today in modern human populations. So, again, it's not hopeless, but what i would like to stress is that i think evolutionary psychologists have a heck of a long way to go, and they don't seem—at least, i don't want to make a blanket statement here, but a lot of them don't seem—to be particularly concerned (let's put it this way) about these sort of limitations, which have been pointed out to them by a variety of sources.

S: So, just to change gears a little bit, reading through your website—which, by the way, if i didn't mention it earlier, you have a website called [http://rationallyspeaking.org/ rationallyspeaking.org], which has a large number of essays covering evolutionary biology, creationism and intelligent design, philosophy, and you even venture out into the misty world of politics, which we don't deal with too much on this show—but i did notice that you wrote an essay about a topic which is – a humorous topic of interest to skeptics, about the Brights phenomenon fiasco a couple of years ago.

M: Oh, yes.

S: Now, just a very a quick history: A couple of years ago, a couple of humanists came up with the idea of essentially renaming those people who take a naturalistic worldview, who believe that there's nothing supernatural or paranormal in the world, and, rather than being labeled with the negative terms that we've been stuck with—''atheist'', and ''skeptic'' –

B: ''Cynic''.

S: – that have a lot of negative connotations—to come up with a positive term, modeling this after the gay community essentially branding themselves as "gay", to basically engender a more positive outlook. Now, you wrote an article a couple of years ago, in 2003, essentially praising this movement and this idea.

M: Mm-hmm.

S: It seems to me that it hasn't really taken off in the last couple of years. Has your opinion of this changed at all since then?

M: Yeah, this is one of those areas in which i'm afraid it was a good idea, but, as you said, it hasn't worked, and probably it hasn't worked partially for the very reasons that were pointed out by critics at the beginning, which is: The parallel with the gay community is in fact compelling. I think the analysis there is correct –

S: Right.

M: – that part of what helped—certainly not the entire thing, but part of what helped—creating a positive image for the gay community is, in fact, the decision to call themselves gay. However—and, therefore, you know, something like "brights" sounds like a bright idea, as initial reactions went—however, unfortunately, "bright", especially in a society like the American one, has a very different connotation than "gay". You know, nobody would disagree with being called "gay", no one would consider somebody, you know, a snob because they consider themselves gay.

S: Right.

M: The word "bright", on the other hand, of course, especially for certain people—and, i must say, especially in a country like the United States, with a long history of several different currents of anti-intellectualism—

S: Right.

M: – to consider oneself "bright", and actually vocally say so, it's obviously, if not the ultimate sin, it's pretty close to it. So, i suppose that's the reason the thing has not worked, and, therefore, i would like to concede that, yes, it probably wasn't exactly as bright an idea as it sounded at the beginning.

P: (laughter)

S: Yeah, it kinda struck us as misguided, and even other early supporters like Michael Shermer have backed off. He wrote a commentary saying that, basically, this was an attempt at rebranding –

M: Right.

S: – and it was done without any marketing research, and without – not even an email to the community saying, "Hey, what do you guys think about this?" Their defense was, well, we didn't want to do things by committee. It would have taken forever, and sometimes you just have to do things –

M: Right.

S: – to get them done. But, they really tried to impose a term onto a very – certainly independently-thinking group of people by fiat, and i thought it was doomed from the outset—especially, as you point out, you know, calling oneself "gay" is not an automatic offense to those people who are – to whom you are not referring, because they will not – you know, being ''not'' gay is not an insult.

M: That's right. But not being bright –

B: (''inaudible'')

P: (laughter) Exactly.

S: Not being bright – yeah, "You're not bright." That is – so, no one is ever going to buy into a term that's an implied insult to everybody else.

M: That's right. Yes.

P: That's right.

S: So, i thought, for that reason, it was kind of doomed to failure.

M: Yep.

S: It does bring up the interesting question, though: What ''do'' we call ourselves? I mean, one thing that's interesting that came out of [http://business.highbeam.com/6258/article-1G1-112409027/big-bright-brouhaha-empirical-study-emerging-skeptical the "bright" brouhaha] was that, you know what? No one came up with a good alternate.

M: Right.

S: I don't know if you have any thoughts on this.

M: Well, so, first of all, it depends on what you mean by "ourselves", because, as you know, the skeptic community, for example, does include some people who ''are'' believers in some sort of supernatural –

S: Yeah, exactly.

M: In that case, you know, i don't want to use the term, for example, "secular humanist", because those people certainly wouldn't consider themselves that way. So, i think my answer to that is two-fold: On the one hand, i don't think we need ''one'' term, because we do actually have a large – you know, several different kinds of constituencies that are – they join efforts in certain areas. Again, skepticism is one of them.

S: Right.

M: You don't have to have – be a nonbeliever in order to be a skeptic in most areas of, you know, science and pseudoscience and so on. The other thing is, when people ask ''me'' what i am, normally i just call myself a "humanist"—not even using the world "secular" because, at this point, there is essentially – there are no non-secular humanists, as far as i'm concerned, anyway.

S: There are no divine humanists?

M: There are no divine humanists. Even though, of course, as you know, that that's how the term originated in the Renaissance. There were ''only'' divine humanists. There were only, you know, religious humanists.

S: Right.

M: But, as far as i'm concerned, the term "humanist" is good enough to describe what i believe. I don't subscribe to any supernatural power out there, certainly none that is concerned with human affairs, and, therefore, i am optimistic about, despite all the evidence, about what human beings can do. And, so, the word "humanist" fits pretty well.

S: Right.

M: If we're not talking about metaphysics, then i call myself a skeptic, because i think it still is the best term, especially if you want to clarify, the skeptic is not necessarily somebody who always says "no". It's a positive skepticism in the sense of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume David Hume].

S: Right.

M: You know, a skeptic is somebody who entertains ideas and subjects them to rational and empirical scrutiny instead of either accepting them without hesitation or rejecting them outright.

S: I agree. I mean, i think – i'm happy to call myself a skeptic. Sometimes i'll modify it by saying i'm a scientific skeptic, but it's basically a skeptic. In terms of religious beliefs, i call myself an agnostic. But i've basically accepted the fact that, no matter what i call myself, i'm going to have to explain it a little bit.

M: Yes.

S: There is no one term that does not require some explanation. But, you know, that's the nature of this whole endeavor. There's a certain amount of complexity to our philosophy and our beliefs, and they defy a single, especially monosyllabic, label, right?

M: And, in fact, that's not a bad idea at all, because the fact that we have to explain ourselves as soon as we label ourselves is actually a good thing, because it implies that, look, part of what we are about is engaging in a discourse with people and educating people about certain aspects of thinking. So, yeah, it does require explanation, and i really wouldn't want to see a (''inaudible'') in which it wouldn't require an explanation.

S: Right.

M: It's – explanations are good, because they engage people in discussions.

S: Yeah, although, admittedly, the downside to that is when you're trying to market a magazine like ''Skeptical Inquirer'' or ''Skeptic'' –

M: Yes.

S: – or you're trying to sell an organization like the New England Skeptical Society, there is a branding—a marketing—issue here. You do want a term that's going to be looked at initially positively, or at least curiously, and not have an initial negative reaction.

M: Sure.

S: I think that, just culturally, historically, almost anything that would reasonably define us—and, again, as you point out, "us" is lots of different things, but with just very loose philosophical connections—that anything that would define us, you know, probably has some negative baggage that goes along with it.

M: True. But, then again, could be worse. I mean, i just got from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] this nice certificate that says that i'm a ''upraxifer''. Well, now, there's a term that is not going anywhere.

S: A upraxifer?

M: Yes.

S: Yeah. Paul Kurtz is, by the way, the founder of both the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and the Secular – the Council for Secular Humanist, and he has a long history of these really obscure terms.

M: That's right.

S: The original name for the ''Skeptical Inquirer'' –

B: ''Zetetic''. Exactly.

S: – was the ''Zetetic''.

M: Yeah. (laughter)

S: Recently, i was at a meeting with him where we were trying to figure out what to name our medical journal that looks at, you know, controversial and pseudoscientific claims, and he had another Greek name that nobody would know what it meant. And i can't even remember what it was. That's how bad it is. But –

M: And that's bad sign right there, that you can't remember it.

S: Yeah, that's a (''inaudible''). Yeah, it's a challenge.

M: Ditto.

S: That's our cross to bear—in the skeptical movement, and in humanism, and in philosophical naturalism, and the entire spectrum and everything in between.

M: Yep.

S: Well, Massimo, it was a pleasure. We greatly enjoyed you having on our podcast, the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. You were, in fact, our first guest—our first guest skeptic on the show.

M: I am honored.

S: We appreciate it.

M: I am honored. It was my pleasure.

S: Thank you. We hope to have you back sometime.

M: Yes, definitely.

B: Thank you, Massimo.

P: All right. Thank you, Massimo.

S: And this is Steven Novella. Until next week, this has been the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

SGU Episode 3

2012-11-02T02:58:28Z

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== Introduction ==

S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. Today is June 7th, 2005. This is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me this week are Perry DeAngelis –

P: Hello, everybody.

S: – and Bob Novella.

B: Good-evening.

S: We have a special guest this week, Massimo Pigliucci, who i will introduce in a moment. But, first, some follow-up from our discussion last week.

== News Items ==
=== Smithsonian ID Fiasco Follow-Up (0:00:32) ===
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/01/AR2005060101986.html The Washington Post: Smithsonian Distances Itself From Controversial Film]

S: Last week we talked about what is now being known as the Smithsonian Institution ID Fiasco. For those of you who listened, the Smithsonian Institution agreed to co-sponsor a film, which was being promoted by the [http://www.discovery.org/ Discovery Institute], which is an intelligent design creationism proponent. The film was called –

P: Shocking lack of judgment.

P: Shocking.

S: A shocking lack of judgment and, we agreed, it was extremely naïve.

P: Yep.

B: And, Steve, they're more than just proponents. I mean, they are the major arm –

S: Yes.

B: – of the movement.

S: That's correct. They exist to promote intelligent design creationism. The film was [http://www.privilegedplanet.com/ ''The Privileged Planet: The Search for Design in the Universe''], or ''Purpose in the Universe''. As in response to the Smithsonian Institution's plan there was a backlash of criticism from the scientific and skeptical communities –

P: Shocked.

S: – and, which has happened in many cases, as we have discussed in the past, when school boards or institutions, you know, fall prey to either creationism or intelligent design, or are being used for this purpose, the blogosphere jumps on it, the cyberspace skeptical and scientific community can react almost instantaneously. Mr. Randall Kremer, who was the public affairs agent for the Smithsonian Institute, was flooded with emails. They were essentially embarrassed out of co-sponsoring the film, which is, you know, a minor victory for skeptical activism.

B: I mean, they should have been embarrassed.

S: They should've been embarrassed. Here, i'm going to read to you the email that i personally sent to Mr. Kremer –

B: – which, i think, just put it over the edge.

S: Yes.

B: That was the, you know, the straw that made them cave.

S: Clearly it was instrumental –

P: No doubt. No doubt.

S: – in this victory—which is, i think, probably representative of the kind of scientific backlash that they received. So here's the email:

<blockquote>Mr. Kremer,

As a scientist and educator i was very dismayed to hear that the prestigious Smithsonian Institution was co-sponsoring the screening of a film promoting the pseudoscience of intelligent design, ''The Privileged Planet: The Search for Purpose in the Universe''. I strongly urge you to reconsider this. The Discovery Institute is a pseudoscientific organization dedicated to promoting religious belief as science. Intelligent design is a thinly-veiled religious belief system designed deliberately to remove any overt religious references from what is otherwise classic creationism. Its purpose is to infiltrate institutions like SI in order to convince the public that it has scientific credentials. Do not be so naïve, as unfortunately others before you have, in thinking that screening this film at SI will not be used by the Discovery Institute and other promoters of ID as scientific authoritative endorsement of ID. In fact, they are already doing so. You have stated that SI policy is such that events of a religious or partisan political nature are not permitted. I would add to that list egregious pseudoscience. Even if you accept the propaganda that ID is not a religious belief, you must acknowledge the consensus opinion of the scientific community that it is simply not science. Do not let SI be exploited to promote an anti-scientific agenda.</blockquote>

P: Hear, hear.

S: And, again, feedback like that, you know, very – within days forced, embarrassed the Smithsonian Institutiton –

P: Must've – he must've got thousands of those.

S: Must've gotten thousands. I hope so. I mean, we and the New England Skeptical Society did our part in spreading the word and encouraging people to write similar emails.

P: And the JREF, with their financial offer –

S: Yeah, well, Randi only $20,000 to SI to ''not'' show the film. They did not accept his offer –

P: Right.

S: – and, in fact, they declined to accept the $16,000 from the Discovery Institute. So they're getting no money.

B: Well, i –

S: They're showing the film anyway.

B: Steve, i don't think they actually declined to accept it. I think they gave it back.

S: Well – yes, fine. The returned it.

P: My understanding was they returned it. They returned it, yeah.

S: They returned the 16,000 and they removed their co-sponsorship of the film, so – The film is still being screened, you know, at a private function in the Smithsonian Institute, but it's not being sponsored, they're not accepting any funds from them, and clearly the imprimatur, the validation, of a prestigious scientific institution like the Smithsonian Institute has been removed from this film and from the Discovery Institute.

P: So it's 90% good. It's not 100%, it's 90%.

S: And i think that they'll be more wary the next time.

P: Right.

S: The real victory here is that this will not happen again. Hopefully.

P: What were they thinking?

S: What were they thinking?

P: Yeah. It's crazy. Crazy.

S: Just incredible.

== Science or Fiction (0:05:09) ==

S: We are going to also introduce a new segment this week, a segment called "Science or Fiction". In this segment, i am going to challenge my panel of skeptics. I have three news items—scientific breakthroughs, scientific news items—from the past week. I'm going to read you a brief summary of each of those items. The trick is that one of these items is not real. One of these items is fiction. The other two are genuine scientific breakthroughs, one is fiction. The challenge for you two this week is to try to decide which one is the fake one.

P: Mere child's play.

S: You have to bring all of your skeptical tools to bear to see if you can sniff out the fake. You can make your comments about each one as i present them, but wait until i've stated all three before you make your guess as to which one is fake. Are you ready?

B: Mm-hmm.

P: Sure.

S: Let's play.

B: Go for it.

S: [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7475-dolphins-teach-their-children-to-use-sponges.html Item number one]: Dolphins have been observed not only using tools, but also teaching tool use to their children. This is the first example of cultural tool use in a non-primate species. That's item number one.

P: Interesting.

S: Item number two: Astronomers have discovered an Earth-like planet orbiting a nearby star, 50 light years from Earth. This is the first Earth-sized planet discovered around another star, and astronomers say there are indications that the planet has an atmosphere. This is the best candidate so far for extraterrestrial life.

P: How far?

S: It's about 50 light years from our system.

P: All right.

S: [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050605183843.htm Item number three]: French scientists have discovered a way to keep water from freezing at hundreds of degrees below zero—near absolute zero. Those are your three items. What are your thoughts?

B: Wow. I've got problems with all of them.

S: I know. That's why they were chosen.

P: (laughter)

B: OK, the dolphins. You said one thing at the end, though, that piqued my interest there. You said that it's the first non-primate species shown to use tools?

S: Right. Well, cultural tool use. In other words, they're – it's not something that's just innate. They're actually teaching this to their children.

B: OK. 'Cause when you said that, i thought of – 'cause i know there are birds that will actually use tools to –

S: There are. And there're some birds that have some problem-solving skills.

B: Right.

S: But this is – they're actually –

B: It's cultural. There's actually a cultural thing.

S: They were observed teaching the tool use, yes.

B: OK, now i – i mean, since, of course, they don't have any hands or opposable thumbs, i assume they're not using their flippers. It would have to be their mouth. So maybe somehow they're using their mouth to manipulate an object they find on the sea floor. I don't think that's – i don't think that's a fact.

P: As for me, i'm gonna say that the first one is the truth. I recently, within the last week, saw a special, i think on the Discovery Channel. You know, it showed dolphins being very sophisticated, particularly a thing that they showed that really struck me was how two males would team up for a long time and keep a female hostage between the two of them. They'd swim around with her, never let her get very far from them –

B: I've heard of that.

P: – for months –

B: Months?

P: – months, they would keep her, so that she would only mate with them.

S: They're smart critters. They're vey smart critters.

B: Wow.

P: She'd try to get away, they'd attack her and really keep her corralled.

B: Now –

P: Anyway, it sounds accurate to me, the first one.

B: The second one has got to be false. We simply are not at the –

P: Yeah, it's too far.

B: No, not actually.

P: To see an atmosphere?

B: Fifty light years is not too far. It's the actual size that can't be right. Earth-sized planets we simply don't have the technology yet to ascertain the – to determine or to find planets that are Earth-sized. Typically, the only things we find are bigger than actually Jupiter –

P: Yeah.

B: – so we're talking thousands and thousands of times bigger than the Earth.

P: He went beyond that, too, Bob. He said that they had evidence that there was an atmosphere on it. How the heck –

B: Well, that's possible. I mean, you could – i think –

P: Not that size.

B: Well, using something –

S: All it requires is spectroscopic analysis –

B: Right.

S: – of the light coming from the atmosphere.

B: Spectroscopy would tell you if there were certain elements in the atmosphere. That's not what concerns me. It's the size, and that's just too small. We haven't – we're not close to detecting Earth-sized yet.

P: That one sounds false to me.

B: We will get there, though. We'll get there, but we're not there yet. Now, that – it doesn't matter what technique they're using. They could be using, you know, the gravitational disturbance of the parent star caused by the planet.

P: Wobbling.

B: Still, Earth-sized planets are just too small to create a nudge that's detectable yet.

S: Interesting.

P: Now, the last one, about the water. I mean, it's impressive –

B: Let me make one more comment about the second one. The other technique is actually—and it was recently perfected. They've actually – they claim to have discovered a planet that was the first planet discovered purely from the reflected light of the parent star, which was quite an achievement. But, still, that was a huge planet, a huge amount of light, relatively speaking.

S: So you don't think we're ready for this breakthrough yet.

B: No, not yet. We will definitely get there, and maybe relatively soon. Maybe, you know, maybe ten years, six years, but i've heard nothing approaching Earth-sized yet. And, the third one. Perry, did you want to comment on the water?

P: I was simply saying that it's impressive, but it simply seems more reasonable. Not precisely sure how you'd go about doing it.

S: Even though they were French scientists?

(laughter)

P: Yeah, well, we're suspending our disbelief for the moment.

B: At what temperature did you say, Steve? You mentioned near absolute zero.

P: Hundreds of degrees below zero.

S: Single digits.

B: Single degrees near absolute zero?

S: Yeah. Eight degrees was, i think, the figure given.

P: That's crazy.

B: That's – now that's liquid? Liquid water? I don't – no, i don't see that happening. No.

P: You gotta choose between the two of them.

B: I know. That's just too damn cold. I mean, even, you know, moving water can get colder than 32 by the fact that it's moving, will lower the freezing temperature a little bit, but to that degree? Maybe there's some sort of state that can get water into that makes it somewhat immune to freezing, but i can't imagine what that might be. Let's see. What – how could they – what could they possibly do to liquid water to maintain that state?

P: I have – i don't know.

B: – even that close –

P: Move it at an incredibly high speed?

S: So it's time to cast your votes.

B: OK. By definition –

P: Yeah, i'm still – i still think number two is less reasonable.

S: Perry votes for number two, the Earth-sized planet around another star. Bob?

B: Is what, true? Science or fiction?

S: As the fake one. As the fiction.

P: As the fiction. I'm writing that down as –

B: Now, there's two fiction. Aren't there two fiction?

S: No, there's one fiction. There's two are real.

P: Right. I believe that number two is fiction.

B: I could have sworn you said one real, two fiction.

P: Come on, Bob.

S: Two are science, one is fiction.

P: These rules are not complicated, Bob.

B: OK. Then, well, it's gotta be two. Two is definitely fiction.

S: So you both cast your vote for two.

P: Correct.

B: Too small.

S: OK. Well, you are both good skeptics. You got the correct answer.

P: (''inaudible'') we are!

S: You did very well.

P: Now, how did the scientist do that with the water?

B: I'm dying to know.

S: Well, we'll take them in order. Let's take them in order.

P: We'll take them in order.

S: A group of dolphins living off the coast of Australia teach their offspring to use their snouts with sponges while foraging for food in the sea floor. So, they actually put sponges on their noses to protect their – to protect them while foraging on the sea floor.

B: How do they do this?

S: Then they caught – They stick it on there. And then they caught mothers teaching this to their children.

P: Wow. Wow.

B: That's fascinating. So if they get, like, a –

S: You were right. Your intuition was right. It was something – they use their snout, not their flippers.

P: Smart critters.

B: Absolutely. So, if they get, like, a red sponge and stick it to their nose, they look kind of like clownfish? Is that how it works?

P: Bob.

S: I guess so.

P: Badum-bum.

S: This is by Krützen and colleagues. They analyzed thirteen, what they're calling "spongers", and 172 non-spongers, and concluded that the practice seems to be passed along family lines, primarily from mothers to daughters, for some reason.

B: That's very believable. I mean, they're just so intelligent. It seems –

P: Women do most of the work in the animal kingdom. That's why.

B: It seems very likely that they improvised some sort of tool use with their snouts. OK. Makes sense.

S: You're absolutely right with number two. I think that that is eventually going to be a headline –

P: Right.

S: – but it's just a few years too early.

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But Bob is just too up-to-date on the planet-hunting state of the art.

P: Hey, hey! I guessed it, too.

S: You did! But Bob had the details. It's true. You both sniffed that one out.

P: Thank you.

B: Water me! Come on, tell me, what's the (''inaudible'') do this?

S: OK. Here's the headline. You're gonna love it. "Nanotube water doesn't freeze, even at hundreds of degrees below zero."

B: Wow.

S: So, what French scientists have done is, they've – they are using the carbon nanotubes as a template, and the water molecules filling these tubes take on a similar structure, where the hydrogen and oxygen atoms form a lattice-like bond, and they – it will not freeze. It will continue to flow through this tube, even down to near-absolute temperatures.

B: That's fascinating.

P: Hum.

B: My god. It changes the molecular arrangement of the water?

S: Yeah, it actually changes the molecular arrangement of the water.

B: But can you still consider it liquid water, though?

S: You know, it's – that's a good question. I didn't say it remained a liquid. I said it didn't freeze.

B: A-ha! OK.

P: It's true.

S: It may actually be another state of water.

B: That makes more sense.

S: It may not technically be the same state as, you know, normal liquid water.

P: Sort of plasmic?

S: It's not a plasma.

B: No.

S: I mean, it's a new – and i don't know if they're actually going to call it a new ''phase'', but it definitely is a new ''state'' that water is in. And it is more like liquid than like ice. It certainly does not form ice crystals. It stays in this lattice formation and does not, you know, freeze into the normal crystalline structure that water ice has.

B: Yeah. It definitely doesn't sound like any of the other states of matter could account for that. I mean, you couldn't – it doesn't sound liquid to me, it doesn't sound – maybe it's a different type of solid. It's definitely not the other types, like plasma that Perry mentioned, or some of the more exotic ones, the Bose–Einstein condensates and the fermionic condensates. It can't be that, either. So, maybe it's a new type of solid for water. OK.

P: Interesting as heck.

S: Very interesting. It remains to be seen what the applications of this would be, but these nanotubes technology is, you know, very, very new and very, very active area of research, and this is just one example.

B: The applications are – appear to be just utterly mind-boggling for these nanotubes. I've never seen a discovery take off in quite the way that nanotubes has. I mean, just from the get-go, you know, the interest was worldwide, and since then they've found potential applications from computing to fibers to, maybe—to all sorts of applications—electronics. It's amazing how versatile this material appears to be. I think we'll be hearing a lot about nanotubes.

S: Very interesting. Well, it is now time to bring on our guest.

== Interview with Massimo Pigliucci (0:16:22) ==
[http://rationallyspeaking.org/ Dr. Pigliucci’s website]

S: With us this week is Dr. Massimo Pigliucci, who we simply call our friend (booming voice) Massimo.

P: (laughs)

S: Massimo is Associate Professor of Evolutionary Biology at SUNY Stony Brook in Long Island. He has published over 70 technical papers in evolution and botany. He's written seven books. His most recent non-technical book is ''Denying Evolution''. He's the author of a column in ''Skeptical Inquirer'' magazine called "Thinking About Science", and he's a frequent contributor not only to ''Skeptical Inquirer'' but also ''Skeptic'', ''Free Inquiry'', ''Philosophy Now'', and ''Philosopher's Magazine''. He has a doctorate in genetics from the University of Ferrarra in Italy, a PhD in botany from the University of Connecticut, and a PhD in philosophy from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, Massimo.

M: Thank you for having me. That list always sounds a little bit embarrassing.

(laughter)

S: Yeah, it always is embarrassing to hear somebody else read your own CV.

B: I wish i had such a list.

P: It's daunting, yes.

S: Thank you for being on our show this week. We appreciate it.

M: My pleasure.

S: So, i'm sure you've been following, in the news over the last few weeks, the recent activity of the – our friends, the intelligent design crew –

M: Yes, indeed.

S: – in Kansas City with the – We just got through talking about the Smithsonian Institute debacle –

M: Right.

S: – which, if you hadn't heard, they backed off from cosponsoring the Discovery Institute film.

M: Right. See, sometimes it works.

S: Sometimes it does work. Sometimes it does work.

P: Amen.

S: And, hopefully, people, you know, like the director of the Smithsonian, will think twice before, you know, falling for the Discovery Institute's coy offers in the future. So, what have you been doing recently, in terms of investigating or writing about the intelligent design crew?

M: Well, one thing that i've ''not'' been doing is to go to Kansas for those [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_evolution_hearings scam hearings that they organized with the local Board of Education].

S: Were you invited?

M: Yes, i was actually invited, and i followed the advice of Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education, more or less politely responding that i was – it wouldn't be a good idea for any scientists to participate.

P: So, Massimo, you agree with the basic, what i've been reading, then, in that the scientific community is really refraining from speaking at those hearings? You agree with that?

M: Right. I agree, and that's actually a change of heart for me, because in the past i've been involved in direct debates with creationists, intelligent design proponents, and so on and so forth. Now, under certain circumstances, those debates are actually fun, i guess, and may have a purpose, depending on the venue and the format and so on. But, definitely, in front of a school board, it's not – it doesn't seem like a good idea, because it really, in that case, does provide the other side with some legitimacy that they, frankly, don't deserve.

S: But do you – critics have said – critics of the decision of Eugenie Scott, and you, obviously, and of scientists that she advised, to boycott those hearings, have said that they already have legitimacy by the mere fact that they're before a school board, and then, therefore, shouldn't the mainstream scientific position be represented? What do you say about that?

M: Well, it depends on – i think, when we're talking about legitimacy, it depends on who bestows the legitimacy. It seems to me that one thing is to be invited by a school board, who as we know, is elected, and doesn't necessarily have much of an effect on either science, or education for that matter. Another thing is to be, on the other hand, given some credence from a professional biologist or a professional scientist, and that's what, i guess, we wanted to avoid in this case. Incidentally, the message was, in no uncertain terms, directed mostly to the school board. In other words, we told them that this was not an acceptable way of deciding these sort of matters.

S: Do you think that strategy worked?

M: I think it worked better than the alternative in this particular case. We'll see, of course, what the final outcome of the Kansas equation is.

P: Right.

M: Apparently, in Kansas, there is never a final outcome.

S: Right.

M: They can change their mind every other year.

P: It's true.

S: We thought it was interesting, the other – the unique or new aspect of this case was that the school board's decision, what they've said so far—now, they haven't rendered a final decision—went beyond just the creation–evolution issue to actually redefining science.

M: Which is, of course – right. Which is, of course, what the intelligent design side actually wants. Beginning with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_E._Johnson Phillip Johnson]'s early books, and certainly now with their chief intellectual [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A._Dembski Bill Dembski], what they want is, in fact, to redefine science. And that's an interesting point, which, i guess, we should spend a couple of minutes on. I have often said –i've debated Bill Dembski a couple of times, and we have exchanged opinions in writings as well, and here is Dembski's position, which sounds very reasonable, and i think it's one of the reasons it's so appealing to, sort of, people who don't have much of a philosophical background, even some scientists. His position is the following: He says, look, it used to be that anything – different kinds of potential causes for events were allowed as possible explanations, since the time of Aristotle—Aristotle included final causes, of course, to which intelligent design will belong—as acceptable kind of answers when one wonders about what's going on in the universe. And, then, Dembski says, Bacon came on—the British philosopher—came on the scene in the sixteenth century and decided, more or less arbitrarily, that final causes were out, that science was only a matter of ''how'' and not of ''why'', and, ever since, according to Dembski, science has been impoverished, and it's time to bring things back, essentially, to the wholeness of the Aristotelian approach. Now, that sounds very interesting, except that there are a couple of things that don't work. First of all, Aristotle never used final causes in a way that Bill Dembski will like to begin with.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: But that's a minor point. The major point is this: There was a very good reason why Bacon did – suggested what he suggested, which was, you realize that science wasn't going to get off the ground while it was still messing around with supernatural explanations. If one always had the supernatural card to play, any time that one was sort of running out of options, then science would simply never really be able to make progress in understanding the natural world.

S: Right.

M: So, that's why he said that those kinds of answers are out. Now, that worked very well for about a couple of centuries, especially in physics—Galileo, Newton, and so on. Then, Darwin came to play, and the game changed again, because, in fact, Darwin did contribute what—Dembski maintains—Darwin did reintroduce final causes in science, in biology. The question of why things happen is a fundamental question in evolutionary biology, and it is a perfectly fair question, which is pursued by biologists since Darwin. It's just that we answer in a different way. When we ask, "Why is the eye structured the way it is?", the answer is "Because natural selection favored certain variations on that structure, which worked better for the purpose of visualizing objects, and so on and so forth. In other words, there is a role for "why" questions in biology. It's just that the answer is grammatically different from the one that intelligent design proponents would want to see in – consider as questions in science.

S: Right. "Why" questions are essentially mechanism. "What is the mechanism of this phenomenon?"

M: The long-term mechanisms. So, the distinction here in biology is particularly clear, between "how" questions and "why" questions. So, i can ask those questions, for example, again, about the eye, and if i ask "How does it work?", then what i mean is, "What are the molecular, et cetera, mechanisms that allow the image to be – you know, the light to be captured, the image to be formed and to be sent to the brain, and so on and so forth?" But if i ask, "Why is the eye there to begin with?", then the answer is—regardless of specific mechanisms—the answer is, "Because there is an advantage for certain living organisms to be able to see what – you know, to perceive and understand their surroundings in terms of light waves.

S: Right. So, evolution is the ultimate "why" answer in – for biology, for biological "why" questions.

M: That's right.

S: Dembski and his crowd would like to reintroduce—essentially take us back before Darwin, before Galileo, before Bacon, even—and to reintroduce supernatural or divine causes into scientific questions. What they say is that by not allowing them we're essentially rigging the game against those types of answers.

M: Right.

S: What's your response to that?

M: Well, my response is that – suppose—i actually asked this question to Dembski at one point, at a meeting at the New York Academy of Sciences a couple of years ago—and the question is, OK, well, suppose, for a moment, that, in fact, we do allow intelligent design, in the sense that Dembski means, back into science. So suppose that i'm going to be, all of a sudden, the director of the National Science Foundation, and i decide to give, you know, three million dollars, over a period of five years, to Dembski—which is a pretty good grant by NSF standards—and i ask him, "What would you do? What sort of experiments would you set up? What sort of empirical hypotheses would you be able to test?" And he had no answer.

P: It's a good question.

M: Yeah! He had no answer.

S: Of course he has no answer. Yeah.

M: So, that is why, i think – so, i guess, to go back to your question, there are two different kinds of answers to "Why is it that the supernatural is out by definition?", essentially. One is the pragmatic one, the one that i just provided. You know, from the point of view of practical scientists, i want to see, you know, the proof is in the pudding. What is he going to do? Suppose that i do give you the money. What sort of hypotheses can you test? And, of course, the answer, again, is "None.", because, by definition, of course, the supernatural agent can do whatever the heck he wants –

S: Right.

M: – and, so, there's no way to predict, and therefore to test, what he's going to do. The other answer is, i think, a little deeper, and that's the philosophical answer—and, as you know, most scientists are not particularly well-versed in philosophy—but the philosophical answer is this: It is a matter of principle, once that you invoke the supernatural, you will not be able to propose empirically testable hypotheses. In other words, it's not just a matter of Bill Dembski's limited imagination, or anybody else's limited imagination, that at the moment we can't think of one, but give me enough time and i'll come up with one. A philosopher would argue that, as a matter of principle, if you abandon the position of methodological naturalism in science, you're dead. You're not doing science anymore. You're maybe doing something else—you might be doing theology, you might be doing some sort of philosophy—but you're certainly not doing science. And it is that difference, of course, between philosophical and methodological naturalism, that is very important, is apparently a little subtle for most people –

S: Right.

M: – but it's very important in terms of this debate.

S: Right, and they either don't get it or don't want to get it.

M: Right. (laughs) I do have the suspicion sometimes that they don't want to get it.

S: They don't want to get it. Because, you know, how many times can you explain it to them –

M: Right.

S: – and to really not understand it, you know, stretches the imagination.

M: Right. I mean, i can see how some people with no background in either science or philosophy might be a little puzzled by this difference, which, by the way, we should probably explain, but somebody like Bill Dembski, who does, actually, in fact, have a degree in philosophy, it's hard to believe that he doesn't understand the implications of that distinction.

S: Right, and i've had the same experience as you. If you remember, we were together at the [http://business.highbeam.com/5799/article-1G1-91236216/fourth-world-skeptics-conference-burbank-lively-foment World Skeptics Conference] a couple of years ago –

M: Yeah.

S: – and i had the opportunity to ask, i think it was Nelson –

M: Mm-hmm.

S: – a similar kind of question –

M: Yeah, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Nelson_(creationist) Paul Nelson].

S: – and what he said was that, you know, you cannot question the mind of god. If i say – which means, as you just said, any hypothesis about intelligent design—about the intelligent designer—that you could seek to test or falsify is rendered unfalsifiable by that statement –

M: Right.

S: – because you can't ask the question, "What would, or what should, the world look like if it were designed by an intelligent designer?", because there's no answer to that question. The answer is, "It looks like whatever it looks like." –

M: Right.

S: – and, therefore, it's not falsifiable, and, therefore, not science.

M: Correct. There is –

B: But couldn't –

S: You know they have to understand that.

M: Right. There is a caveat there—which, of course, is something that Dembski either as a matter of – either on purpose or because he really doesn't see the difference, he insists on this point—he says, "But, look: There's plenty of good science that is done under the assumption of intelligent design." He talks about forensic science, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and so on and so forth. And, of course, he's right: That kind of science—archeology, for example—''is'' done under the presumption of intelligent design. But, in those cases, you can, in fact, question the mind of the designer.

S: Right.

M: In fact, the whole point is that you do know, or at least make hypotheses about –

B: Excellent.

M: – what the designer is doing and why –

S: Right.

M: If you couldn't do that, then there would be no archeology, no SETI –

S: Right,

M: – and no forensic science.

S: Exactly.

P: Exactly.

B: That's a good point.

M: And, so, ''intelligent design'' is a little too broad of a term in –

S: So it's a false analogy on their part.

M: That's right. Exactly. It is.

S: I've always – it's always struck me, too, that it's one enormous logical fallacy. Now, we keep track of logical fallacies on the show. We actually have our [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/resources/logicalfallacies.aspx top 20 list of logical fallacies] –

M: (laugter)

S: – which you can read on our website. It's at [http://www.theness.com/ theness.com]. There's a couple that they're using here. One, of course, is the argument from ignorance: "We don't know something, therefore god did it."

M: Right.

S: And we – specifically, in this type of explanation, you can also call that the "god of the gaps" argument.

M: Right.

S: But it's also confusing ''currently unexplained'' with ''unexplainable''. Again, that's sort of, "The current gap of knowledge, that's what god did."

M: Right.

S: And, as that gap retreats, and the ever-advancing, you know, knowledge of science, god still fills whatever gaps and crevices are currently unexplained as if they never will be explained –

M: Right.

S: – even though, tomorrow, they ''are'' explained.

M: I would make, also, an even third-level distinction. That is, there are two kinds of unexplainable questions or phenomena.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: There is the impossibility to explain something because, in fact, there is, essentially, no explanation within the realm of natural laws—which is the sort of unexplainable phenomenon that Dembski likes—but there is also what philosophers call ''epistemic unexplainability''. There may be some things out there that are explainable in the sense that there ''is'' an answer somewhere, but, because of the limitations, both current and for possibly future human understanding and human reason, we might never be able to get the answer.

S: Right.

M: So, one possible –

B: It's like a dog –

M: Yes.

B: It's like a dog trying to understand calculus.

M: That's right. Exactly.

B: It's never going to happen.

M: And there are some interesting possible examples within science. So, for example, the question of the origin of life ''may'' fall into that category—not because the origin of life is unexplainable in principle—i don't think it is—and, of course, we ''may'' explain it. I mean, you know, next week, we may see an article in ''Science'' or ''Nature'', somebody has actually come up with the right answer. But it may also be the sort of thing that is epistemically unexplainable by human beings simply because there's very, if any, clues left, essentially. You know, something that happened four billion years ago. There are no fossils. We have very little understanding, or way to get decent information, about what the conditions actually were. So we might never be able to answer that question. But that—even that, even granting that—it still doesn't bring you any closer to the necessity of a supernatural explanation.

S: Right, right. Once again, we are speaking to Massimo Pigliucci, philosopher and evolutionary scientist, and author of many articles and books. We've been talking about the intelligent design phenomenon and proponents of intelligent design, which brings us, really, to the philosophical underpinnings of science itself—What is the difference between science and religion, philosophically?—and we've brought up some terms like "philosophical naturalism"—our organization, for example, advocates what i would call "scientific skepticism"—and there are some subtle differences between these types of philosophies. You've written several reviews and articles, for example, criticizing [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould Stephen Jay Gould]'s summary, or summation –

M: Right.

S: – of the relationship between science and religion.

M: Right.

S: Gould came up with this idea of "non-overlapping magesteria", in which both science and religion occupy different –

B: Domains of knowledge.

S: – intellectual domains—right, different domains of knowledge he calls "magesteria"—and they each serve their purpose. You're very – you have been very critical of this idea.

M: Well, for plenty of reasons. I mean, there's not – i should probably start out by saying that i am not a Gould-hater like some of my colleagues. I really like some of the stuff that Stephen Gould wrote, both technical and non-technical, and i really dislike some of the other stuff. In particular, about religion, there are a couple of things that really, i think, are worth considering in that context. First of all, Gould did not come up with the basic idea that you mention, although he did come up with the fancy name, but that idea goes back, essentially, all the way to St. Augustine.

S: Yes, and he acknowledges that, to be fair, yeah.

M: Right. Now, the basic idea, however, is, i think, a bit misleading, for two reasons: Number one, because it hinges on the definition of "god", which Gould leaves kind of up in the air for most of that book. At one point, he finally has to come to terms with the fact that, well, in fact, there are some conceptions of god that do go head-on against science. For example, if you are a Young Earth Creationist who believes that there was a worldwide flood four thousand years old – ago, then, i'm sorry, science just tells you you're wrong. And, if your belief in god hinges on that particular belief then you're dead in the water. So even Gould had to acknowledge that it really depends on what you mean by "god" and what particular version of "god" you're espousing, which is, of course, very different from the question of science. There are no different varieties of science that we're talking about here. It's either you're – you know, scientists disagree on specific theories, but there is, essentially, one body of methods and knowledge that we call "science". On the other hand, religion is an incredibly heterogeneous body of beliefs. So, one has to, at least, to be clear on what one means, because it sounds very nice, it sounds very ecumenical, to say, "Well, science and religion can be different areas of expertise, and let's just keep them separate." Well, it depends. But even within the kind of religion that does not have any direct conflict with science—So, suppose you're, you know, a progressive Catholic. You know, the Pope. The previous Pope, John Paul II, as we know, did acknowledge that the Catholic Church does not have much of a problem—have a problem at all—with the modern theory of – biological theory of evolution.

S: Right.

M: OK. Well, that sounds very good. That still does not amount to say that there's no overlap at all between the two areas of intellectual endeavor. For one thing, because part of science is now getting, actually, to the point of providing explanations, at least tentative explanations, for where religious beliefs and morality come from to begin with.

P: Mm-hmm.

M: Now, i'm not a particular defender of evolutionary psychology, either, but the ideas are out there. And the fact that the ideas are out there means that science is, in fact, beginning to encroach in the area – on the area of morality, and religious beliefs, and so on and so forth. Should we kick it out, just because we feel uncomfortable about it, or because some people feel uncomfortable about it? I don't think so. That's not to say that current ideas about evolution are more likely or necessarily correct, but it's just that it is worth exploring as a possibility.

S: Right.

M: And, lastly, there – the last thing that really, i guess, prompted my disagreement with Gould, is that he seems to somehow have forgotten that there is a whole different area of human knowledge, or human intellectual endeavor, that greatly overlaps, and often contradicts, some religious positions, and that's, of course, philosophy—particularly moral philosophy. So, to say, as he says in that book, that morality is the province of religion—well, wait a minute. Actually, morality is the province of a lot of different kinds of activities—as i said a minute ago, even possibly science—but certainly not ''only'' religion. So, in other words, the situation, it seems to me, is a lot more complicated than the nice and, you know, neat distinction that Gould was trying to make.

S: Yeah, i agree. He did see – he did go out of his way to sort of overstate the historical non-overlapping of science and religion, and it struck me that you have to sort of, you know, turn a blind eye to all of the cases of – you know, religion, essentially, completely dominated science, was ''the'' explanation for the natural world, and has had to retreat territory, if you will, to scientific explanations and the institution of science. But, do you think you could, you know, rescue a legitimate point from Gould's position by saying that what he's describing is not the historical relationship between science and religion but what the relationship should be—in other words, that religion ''should'' avoid overlapping with science and ''should'' restrict itself to the domains of morality and to the great unanswerable questions of existence that are inherently not explainable or not explorable by scientific methods? What would you say to that?

M: I think that is a fair point. However, the question then can also be asked the other way around: Should science be restricted from inquiries into morality and religious beliefs and so on?

S: Well, you could – as we were saying with the intelligent design thing, there are some questions that are simply outside the realm of science –

M: Right.

S: – and you can argue that, well, if, once you're outside the realm of science by, you know, methodological naturalism, then, you know, that is the domain of faith. You're free to have any arbitrary belief or faith that you choose, because these are questions that are inherently outside of the scientific realm. For example, you may – some people believe that the question of whether or not god exists—or any power or entity or ''thing'' that is outside of the natural laws of the universe, not bound by nature, if you will—that that's an inherently unanswerable question by science and therefore is in the realm of faith.

M: Right.

S: Would you agree with that non-overlapping aspect?

M: Right. Yes, i would agree with that nonoverlapping – i'm afraid, however, that that would leave very little outside, in fact, of the realm of science, and i'm perfectly happy – if people are happy with that conclusion –

S: Yes.

M: – i'm fine to go along with it. But the kind of questions—the kind of encroaching of science into the territory of religion and morality that i was referring to—does not deal directly with the question of the existence of god—which, you're right, it's by definition outside the realm of science. But there are other things that are close enough to really bother a lot of religious believers that science is now beginning to encroach upon.

S: Right.

M: So, suppose that we do come up, eventually, with a very reasonable, very serious theory of how morality—a sense of morality, at least, and even possibly some certain specific moral rules—evolved by natural selection among primates and (''inaudible'') you know, groups or societies.

S: Right.

M: Well, you know, is that encroaching on religion, or not?

S: Well, this is what i would say to this—and this is – i've certainly heard humanists and others take this approach—that science deals with statements of fact—what is the state of history, the state of nature—whereas morality deals with statements of value. So, whenever you have to make a value judgment, that is a question that can be informed—factually informed—by science, but cannot be made scientifically.

M: Mm-hmm.

S: So, that is a very practical and real place to draw the line—again, to map out these domains.

M: Right. So, what you're referring to is what, in philosophy, is known as the naturalistic fallacy, which was discussed originally by David Hume. The idea was, in fact, that you cannot go from what ''is'' to what ''ought to be'' –

S: Right.

M: – from a matter of fact to a matter of value. OK. Now, i have actually taken that position myself in the past and, quite frankly, at this moment i keep vesseling back and forth.

S: Right.

M: So, don't necessarily hold me to what i'm about to say in a few months, because i may change my mind again. But, there is some interesting situations here that need to be discussed. So, while i will certainly grant that there are – there is a large area of specific moral decisions that are very far from anything that science can say at the moment, there are some particular moral values—particular moral rules—that seem to be, in fact, fairly straightforwardly explainable by science. For example, there is a whole area now in philosophy of ethics and philosophy of morality that looks at the use of optimality models—game theoretical models—to predict what sort of behavior would be optimal in a group of individuals, given certain constraints. This is a sort of mathematical modeling that has been done in evolutionary biology for a long time, but until recently, it has not been applied, in fact, directly to questions of human morality. Well, it turns out that when people have—in the last three or four years, there've been a series of papers in major science magazines—when people have, in fact, applied that kind of game-theoretical approach to realistic situations and have actually tested their predictions, with actual real human beings, the funny thing that turned out is that the models were able to predict, very closely, what real human beings would consider – how they would act and what they would consider moral or nonmoral. That raises the question that some kinds of human behavior—human morality, such as our attitude toward killing people, or our attitude toward cheating, and so on and so forth—those actually may be a matter of fact, meaning that they are the expected outcome of the evolution of a society of a certain kind of (''inaudible''), certain kinds of animals, capable of thinking in fairly abstract manners and so on and so forth. If that is the case, seems to me that that approach begins to break down—it may not entirely break down, but it begins to at least blur the line—between factual and value judgments, because now the value judgment is predictable and explainable in terms of facts about nature.

S: Yeah, i agree that there are certain things that we, as human beings, value, and the evolutionary psychologists are certainly engaged in an attempt to explain why we make those value judgments—again, the evolutionary "why" –

M: Right.

S: – What was the advantage for us having these value judgments?—so – but i'm not sure i agree that having a causal evolutionary "why" to those values makes them not values. Again, i said that would – for me, that's science ''informing'' the value judgment. But we still place a value on life, we place a value on ''human'' life, and then we get to – there is some point where you have to make a judgment call. For example, how much relative value should we place upon animal life versus human life?

M: Right.

S: How much relative value should we place upon the life of an embryo versus the life of a mother?

M: Now, i think you're – i think you're right.

S: Science can inform these questions, but it ultimately comes down to a value judgment –

M: Right.

S: – that is outside the realm of pure empiricism.

M: I think you're right, but the way that, therefore, i would see it is not as clear a line of separation between facts on one hand and values on the other. I would see some values as actually explainable entirely, or in large part, as the result of facts of nature—for example, again, the kind of society – the kind of animal that we are, actually. Other values, are, on the other hand – may be informed by facts discovered by science but not entirely explained by it, and then there may be—but probably there very likely are—certain areas of moral judgment, such as, probably, the one you just touched upon, that is, how do we treat other animals—that are, in fact, essentially entirely outside the explanations of evolutionary biology.

S: Right.

M: That, to me, brings up an interesting model, however, of sort of a continuum between fact and value, rather than a sharp distinction.

S: I agree, which is true in so much of, you know, intellectual distinctions.

M: Right.

S: It's a fuzzy continuum, not a sharp demarcation. But that doesn't mean—and that's actually another logical fallacy –

M: Right.

S: – the false continuum—that doesn't mean that there isn't a distinction to be made at the extremes –

M: Right.

S: – that there aren't certain questions that are pretty purely factual and other questions that are pretty purely, you know, value judgments or moral, if you want to use that term.

M: Yes, i think you're right. But the question that concerns us as skeptics and scientists and so on is, well, how many people are going to be happy with this idea of a continuum? Now, it may be that a lot of people are simply going to be very unhappy with the idea that there is any continuity at all –

S: Right.

M: – and, you know, how do we....?

S: You know, i agree, but i think that this is such a critical, core intellectual concept that i don't think you can water it down.

M: Right.

S: I think we just have to, through education, get people to think in a little bit more complex way, and to appreciate the concept of continuum, because i just can't imagine dispensing with it or trying to teach concepts with a false dichotomy –

M: Right.

S: – without giving people the appreciation for how to think about continuum with, you know, pseudoscience on one end and science at the other end, and with a continuum in between, for example. And, again, pretty much anything you can – any distinction you can think to make is really probably a continuum and not a sharp demarcation.

M: Right. Right.

S: So, i agree with you that that's a very common fallacy that people fall into, and i think we just need to force our way through with education, to make these kinds of decisions.

M: Which brings us to the question of what kind of an education? And, as you know, there have been – there's been a lot of talk about, we need more science education and we need more scientific education will help solving these kind of problems. And, over the years, i've become convinced that, actually, we don't need more science education—at least not the kind of science education we're doing at the moment.

S: Right, we need better standards of care.

B: Critical thinking skills.

M: Or different. I think we need quite a different kind of science education, because, still today, a lot of our science education is—especially in disciplines such as biology, much less so in areas such as physics—but biology is, to a large extent, you know, a factual – applied in a factual manner.

S: Right.

M: So, you know, really, an introductory course in biology, it's almost as charming as the yellow pages. I mean, you just, you know, start with A and end with Z. And there is very little that we do to actually train our students and our children toward the real objective to education, which i think is critical thinking abilities.

B: Yeah.

M: Now, it is true, of course, that you cannot think on an empty mind, so (''inaudible'') critical thinking about something, you actually do have to know ''some'' of the facts.

S: Right.

M: But i really don't believe the model that the facts – that the critical thinking is simply going to be the result of seepage through an ocean of facts. I don't think we need the ocean of facts.

S: No, yeah, i agree. Clearly, the critical thinking—theory, understanding, and logic—does not flow naturally from just memorizing a bunch of facts.

M: Right.

S: There are certainly people that know lots of facts but have no real understanding—like, oh, Creationists, for example –

M: Right. Yes.

S: – or anyone that we would think of as a crank, you know. We know these people. They have all this factual knowledge, but they just don't get it.

M: Right.

S: At the same time, empty theories—you know, you tend to drift off into La La Land if you don't have some actual empirical facts to anchor you to reality.

M; That's right.

S: So, it's an interaction, an intimate interaction between the two: theory and fact working together hand-in-hand. That's – that is what we need to teach kids, and that's why intelligent design and creationism is such a – would be such a critical blow—and ''has'' been, in fact, a critical blow—to the quality of our science education, 'cause it really undercuts that relationship.

M: Right. Yes. You cannot – it's hard to exercise critical thinking when one of the possibilities on the table is that a supernatural being just did it. "And, why did he do it?" "Well, because he felt like it."

S: Right.

M: "And, how did he do it?" "Well, who knows? He was supernatural."

S: Right.

M: Well, there's not much you can go on from that kind of premise, obviously.

S: You mention that you weren't a big fan of evolutionary psychology –

M: Right.

S: – which is basically the discipline of trying to explain human motivations, and beliefs, and morality in evolutionary terms. What's your beef with that?

M: Well, the idea, i think, is sound—meaning that – you know, the basic idea is that, look, human beings are, of course, one kind of animal, and, as all other animals on Earth, we have an evolutionary history. We evolved by natural selection, among other mechanisms, over a long period of time, and so it's only logical to think that natural selection did not shape just our physical bodies, but it also shaped some of—at least, in part—our mental abilities.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: We know that natural selection can shape and change the behavior of a lot of animals, so why not humans?

S: Right.

M: So, the basic premise, i think, is fundamentally sound. The problem is this: Since, of course, as we know, behavior, especially humanly interesting behaviors, don't fossilize. They don't leave much of a fossil record.

S: Right.

M: Since we don't have – (''glitch'') – and the solution is made worse by the fact that there are no close relatives—phylogenetically speaking, evolutionarily speaking—to human beings alive today. You know, our closest relatives are chimpanzees and bonobos, which have diverged from us several million years ago. That's not even close by any standard of so-called phylogenetic comparative analysis. So we don't have – of course, there ''were'' other species of humans, but they all, for one reason or another, died off some time ago.

S: Well, let me just pause there for a minute, though. Have you – did you read [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan Carl Sagan]'s book ''Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors''?

M: Yes, mm-hmm.

S: So, i mean, actually, his line of argument in that book was looking at the behavior of chimps and primates to see if we can infer anything about human psychological evolutionary ancestors.

M: Right. Right, well –

S: So, you're not saying that we can't get ''any'' value from looking at chimps and our closest relatives?

M: No. No, i'm not saying that we can't get any value, but i'm saying that we can get very little value, for the following reason, and with all due respect to Carl Sagan, but – the reason is this: At best, we have a phylogenetic group—you know, close relatives—of three or four species. Right? You know, if you count the two species of chimpanzees and one gorilla.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: And that's simply not enough for any serious comparative phylogenetic analysis. In fact, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetic_comparative_methods comparative phylogenetics] is – has been a booming discipline in evolutionary biology for the last twenty years, but all the best studies that have been done in comparative phylogenetic studies usually include a large number of species that are fairly closely related to each other—meaning, at a minimum, twenty or thirty. The reason for that is because then you can apply statistical techniques that have been, you know, developed over the last several years.

S: Right.

M: The problem, therefore, with the case of humans is not that it's impossible in – as a matter of principle, or that these are particularly unsound ideas. It just happens that we're pretty unlucky in terms of number of comparisons we can make.

S: Right.

M: Now, that said, of course, yes, one can look at the behavior of chimpanzees or bonobos—which, by the way, are very different from each other and equally –

S: Right.

M: equally related to us—but, and, of course, get some clues or some interesting ideas, some interesting suggestions, about how certain human behaviors, or certain human traits have evolved. So, if, in fact, we were doing – if evolutionary psychology were a branch of philosophy, ''informed'' by science—that is, it's a way to build plausible stories about the origin of certain human traits, and you know what? We cannot really test them rigorously, but these are plausible—then i'm perfectly happy with them. In fact, that's exactly what i said a few minutes ago in this broadcast when i was talking about possible ideas about the evolution of morality, and so on and so forth.

S: Right.

M: But, the problem comes to me because when evolutionary psychologists really make a hard pitch for the idea that theirs is, in fact, a quantifiable science of empirically testable hypotheses. Largely, though not entirely, it's not. And it's not, not because of their fault, but because of the reality of the situation. We only have a few species to compare, not enough to carry out statistical tests, and we have otherwise very little information about what human environments were like—especially social environments were like—during the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene Pleistocine]. We have next to nothing in terms of knowledge of what humans actually did, behaved, or thought at the time.

S: Right.

M: And so, you know, to me, evolutionary psychology, at the moment—and i don't see how this is going to change any time soon—is an interesting way of thinking about how certain human traits may have come about, but it is really not a science in the satisfactory sense of the term.

S: Now, there's one other method that you didn't comment on, that might be more plausible for evolutionary psychology, and that is looking at the phenotypic expression, if you will, throughout currently existing human populations. So, although we only have one species, we do have a number of races, we have a number of isolated cultures, and what evolutionary psychologists do is look for those psychological traits which seem to be universal among humans, despite vast disparities in culture, and that is one other window onto evolutionary psychology. What do you think about that?

M: Yeah, again, that is a really reasonable approach, and a reasonable approach that was used by evolutionary biologists in – when they study other species. In some sense, however, it suffers from the opposite problem from the one we were just talking about. So, if we're talking about long-term evolution, as we said a minute ago, we're missing a sufficient number of comparisons. If we're talking about very, very short-term evolution—so we're talking about evolution within ''homo sapiens''—perhaps we can actually understand something about differences between existing populations of humans. But, when it comes down to how those universals that you were talking about actually get involved—you know, were they the result of natural selection, or of other evolutionary processes—there are evolutionary processes that are not selective in nature, so, for example, you know, random drift is the result of simply fixing certain genes in certain small populations—we know that human beings—we know from molecular data—that the human population at certain times in its history was, in fact, small enough to cause that sort of random drift of characteristics—so, for any particular camp that we see today, we're not going to be in a position to know if it was the result of natural selection—as, of course, evolutionary psychologists will maintain—or the result of, essentially, historical accidents. And that is, by the way, the one-million-dollar question in evolutionary biology, you know, how do you discriminate between selective histories and random accidents.

S: Right.

M: The way, usually, again, biologists do it is when they either have a very detailed level of information in the fossil record, or when they have a lot of closely related species. I can tell you one example: Look, this may be a little – the example itself is a little technical, but it's, i think, very illuminating about the sort of things that we would like to be able to do in evolutionary psychology, and that, i think, at the moment, at least, we can't do. One of the best examples published in the last few years of competitive phylogenetic studies in non-human animals was the – a study that dealt with the question of why certain fish have – the male fish have a long tail, which seems to be attractive to females. So, these are swordtail fish, which you can buy for your aquarium. And, it has been known for a long time that females have a preference for males that have a long tail. Well, the question was this: Did the preference evolve first, or did the tail evolve first? And how are you going to answer that sort of question? You cannot answer it by looking at variation within the current species, because you will find males with longer or shorter tails, and you will find females with more or less preference for long tails, but you won't be able—since they're all mixed around—you can't tell which one came first.

S: Right.

M: The way they solved this problem—this was an extremely elegant piece of work—they looked at – these researchers looked at the fifteen or twenty most closely-related species to the swordtail fish. Some of these species have the tail—the very close relatives—and some of them don't. The males don't have the tail. So, if you trace back the evolution of the tail, you will find that, at one point, a certain, you know, number of million years ago, there were fish that were closely related to the swordtail which did not have the tail. Turns out, however, that their females have the preference. So, if you expose the female of some close relatives without the tail, to a male that has an artificial tail, they'll go for it. That is a very strong indication that, in fact, the female preference evolved before the tail –

S: Before the tail.

M: Right. And the tail evolved as a result of the fact that, for whatever reason—which we don't know at the moment—some females did have that preference. Now, that's a beautiful example of how you can figure out, in fact, how natural selection can favor certain not only morphological traits, such as the tail, but certain – but interacts with behavioral traits, such as female preference. That's exactly the sort of stuff that evolutionary biologists would ''die'' to have in human species.

S: Right.

M: And, the problem, again, is that, unfortunately, we don't have twenty or twenty-five species to play with.

S: Right. One more attempt to rescue evolutionary psychology.

M: (laughter) OK!

P: (laughter)

S: One more attempt, and that is: computer models, where you essentially take preferences and subject them to computer evolutionary models, and then see what those – what advantages—survival advantages—those psychological preferences result in –

M: Right.

S: – to see how—''statistically'', how—that matches actual human preferences and human behavior. What do you think about that approach?

M: Right. Again, that's a very reasonable approach, and, in fact, actually, among the ones we've discussed so far, is probably the best.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: That goes back to the game-theoretical models of evolution of morality, actually, that i was mentioning some time earlier.

S: Right.

M: Again, those are very suggestive. And, you know, whenever we do get a match between a reasonably-built mathematical model and a reasonably valid –

S: Calibrated data.

M: Yeah, calibrated data, then – of course, that's a very interesting finding. It, by itself, of course, is not conclusive, but it's a heck of an interesting find. Now, that said, there are caveats there, too. Number one: Those models do depend, a lot, on the assumptions that are embedded in the parameters. So, the costs, for example, to fitness.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: And those assumptions are often just a guess of the modeler. You know, they're difficult to just find independently from an empirical perspective. This is not just for humans. It's a problem with game-theoretical models in general. The other thing is, again, it's difficult to get very reliable or meaningful data from modern human populations, because modern human populations, unfortunately, are, by and large, so mixed up, in terms of cultural values and influences. And, also, it's very difficult to measure fitness in modern environments. And, in fact, one can make the argument that fitness in modern environments is essentially irrelevant to the question, because what we really want to know is, what were the fitness payoffs in the Pleistocene –

S: Right.

M: – you know, during the time in which these traits really did evolve? Those fitness payoffs and trade-offs may have been very, very different from the ones you can measure today in modern human populations. So, again, it's not hopeless, but what i would like to stress is that i think evolutionary psychologists have a heck of a long way to go, and they don't seem—at least, i don't want to make a blanket statement here, but a lot of them don't seem—to be particularly concerned (let's put it this way) about these sort of limitations, which have been pointed out to them by a variety of sources.

S: So, just to change gears a little bit, reading through your website—which, by the way, if i didn't mention it earlier, you have a website called [http://rationallyspeaking.org/ rationallyspeaking.org], which has a large number of essays covering evolutionary biology, creationism and intelligent design, philosophy, and you even venture out into the misty world of politics, which we don't deal with too much on this show—but i did notice that you wrote an essay about a topic which is – a humorous topic of interest to skeptics, about the Brights phenomenon fiasco a couple of years ago.

M: Oh, yes.

S: Now, just a very a quick history: A couple of years ago, a couple of humanists came up with the idea of essentially renaming those people who take a naturalistic worldview, who believe that there's nothing supernatural or paranormal in the world, and, rather than being labeled with the negative terms that we've been stuck with—''atheist'', and ''skeptic'' –

B: ''Cynic''.

S: – that have a lot of negative connotations—to come up with a positive term, modeling this after the gay community essentially branding themselves as "gay", to basically engender a more positive outlook. Now, you wrote an article a couple of years ago, in 2003, essentially praising this movement and this idea.

M: Mm-hmm.

S: It seems to me that it hasn't really taken off in the last couple of years. Has your opinion of this changed at all since then?

M: Yeah, this is one of those areas in which i'm afraid it was a good idea, but, as you said, it hasn't worked, and probably it hasn't worked partially for the very reasons that were pointed out by critics at the beginning, which is: The parallel with the gay community is in fact compelling. I think the analysis there is correct –

S: Right.

M: – that part of what helped—certainly not the entire thing, but part of what helped—creating a positive image for the gay community is, in fact, the decision to call themselves gay. However—and, therefore, you know, something like "brights" sounds like a bright idea, as initial reactions went—however, unfortunately, "bright", especially in a society like the American one, has a very different connotation than "gay". You know, nobody would disagree with being called "gay", no one would consider somebody, you know, a snob because they consider themselves gay.

S: Right.

M: The word "bright", on the other hand, of course, especially for certain people—and, i must say, especially in a country like the United States, with a long history of several different currents of anti-intellectualism—

S: Right.

M: – to consider oneself "bright", and actually vocally say so, it's obviously, if not the ultimate sin, it's pretty close to it. So, i suppose that's the reason the thing has not worked, and, therefore, i would like to concede that, yes, it probably wasn't exactly as bright an idea as it sounded at the beginning.

P: (laughter)

S: Yeah, it kinda struck us as misguided, and even other early supporters like Michael Shermer have backed off. He wrote a commentary saying that, basically, this was an attempt at rebranding –

M: Right.

S: – and it was done without any marketing research, and without – not even an email to the community saying, "Hey, what do you guys think about this?" Their defense was, well, we didn't want to do things by committee. It would have taken forever, and sometimes you just have to do things –

M: Right.

S: – to get them done. But, they really tried to impose a term onto a very – certainly independently-thinking group of people by fiat, and i thought it was doomed from the outset—especially, as you point out, you know, calling oneself "gay" is not an automatic offense to those people who are – to whom you are not referring, because they will not – you know, being ''not'' gay is not an insult.

M: That's right. But not being bright –

B: (''inaudible'')

P: (laughter) Exactly.

S: Not being bright – yeah, "You're not bright." That is – so, no one is ever going to buy into a term that's an implied insult to everybody else.

M: That's right. Yes.

P: That's right.

S: So, i thought, for that reason, it was kind of doomed to failure.

M: Yep.

S: It does bring up the interesting question, though: What ''do'' we call ourselves? I mean, one thing that's interesting that came out of [http://business.highbeam.com/6258/article-1G1-112409027/big-bright-brouhaha-empirical-study-emerging-skeptical the "bright" brouhaha] was that, you know what? No one came up with a good alternate.

M: Right.

S: I don't know if you have any thoughts on this.

M: Well, so, first of all, it depends on what you mean by "ourselves", because, as you know, the skeptic community, for example, does include some people who ''are'' believers in some sort of supernatural –

S: Yeah, exactly.

M: In that case, you know, i don't want to use the term, for example, "secular humanist", because those people certainly wouldn't consider themselves that way. So, i think my answer to that is two-fold: On the one hand, i don't think we need ''one'' term, because we do actually have a large – you know, several different kinds of constituencies that are – they join efforts in certain areas. Again, skepticism is one of them.

S: Right.

M: You don't have to have – be a nonbeliever in order to be a skeptic in most areas of, you know, science and pseudoscience and so on. The other thing is, when people ask ''me'' what i am, normally i just call myself a "humanist"—not even using the world "secular" because, at this point, there is essentially – there are no non-secular humanists, as far as i'm concerned, anyway.

S: There are no divine humanists?

M: There are no divine humanists. Even though, of course, as you know, that that's how the term originated in the Renaissance. There were ''only'' divine humanists. There were only, you know, religious humanists.

S: Right.

M: But, as far as i'm concerned, the term "humanist" is good enough to describe what i believe. I don't subscribe to any supernatural power out there, certainly none that is concerned with human affairs, and, therefore, i am optimistic about, despite all the evidence, about what human beings can do. And, so, the word "humanist" fits pretty well.

S: Right.

M: If we're not talking about metaphysics, then i call myself a skeptic, because i think it still is the best term, especially if you want to clarify, the skeptic is not necessarily somebody who always says "no". It's a positive skepticism in the sense of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume David Hume].

S: Right.

M: You know, a skeptic is somebody who entertains ideas and subjects them to rational and empirical scrutiny instead of either accepting them without hesitation or rejecting them outright.

S: I agree. I mean, i think – i'm happy to call myself a skeptic. Sometimes i'll modify it by saying i'm a scientific skeptic, but it's basically a skeptic. In terms of religious beliefs, i call myself an agnostic. But i've basically accepted the fact that, no matter what i call myself, i'm going to have to explain it a little bit.

M: Yes.

S: There is no one term that does not require some explanation. But, you know, that's the nature of this whole endeavor. There's a certain amount of complexity to our philosophy and our beliefs, and they defy a single, especially monosyllabic, label, right?

M: And, in fact, that's not a bad idea at all, because the fact that we have to explain ourselves as soon as we label ourselves is actually a good thing, because it implies that, look, part of what we are about is engaging in a discourse with people and educating people about certain aspects of thinking. So, yeah, it does require explanation, and i really wouldn't want to see a (''inaudible'') in which it wouldn't require an explanation.

S: Right.

M: It's – explanations are good, because they engage people in discussions.

S: Yeah, although, admittedly, the downside to that is when you're trying to market a magazine like ''Skeptical Inquirer'' or ''Skeptic'' –

M: Yes.

S: – or you're trying to sell an organization like the New England Skeptical Society, there is a branding—a marketing—issue here. You do want a term that's going to be looked at initially positively, or at least curiously, and not have an initial negative reaction.

M: Sure.

S: I think that, just culturally, historically, almost anything that would reasonably define us—and, again, as you point out, "us" is lots of different things, but with just very loose philosophical connections—that anything that would define us, you know, probably has some negative baggage that goes along with it.

M: True. But, then again, could be worse. I mean, i just got from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurtz Paul Kurtz] this nice certificate that says that i'm a ''upraxifer''. Well, now, there's a term that is not going anywhere.

S: A upraxifer?

M: Yes.

S: Yeah. Paul Kurtz is, by the way, the founder of both the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and the Secular – the Council for Secular Humanist, and he has a long history of these really obscure terms.

M: That's right.

S: The original name for the ''Skeptical Inquirer'' –

B: ''Zetetic''. Exactly.

S: – was the ''Zetetic''.

M: Yeah. (laughter)

S: Recently, i was at a meeting with him where we were trying to figure out what to name our medical journal that looks at, you know, controversial and pseudoscientific claims, and he had another Greek name that nobody would know what it meant. And i can't even remember what it was. That's how bad it is. But –

M: And that's bad sign right there, that you can't remember it.

S: Yeah, that's a (''inaudible''). Yeah, it's a challenge.

M: Ditto.

S: That's our cross to bear—in the skeptical movement, and in humanism, and in philosophical naturalism, and the entire spectrum and everything in between.

M: Yep.

S: Well, Massimo, it was a pleasure. We greatly enjoyed you having on our podcast, the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. You were, in fact, our first guest—our first guest skeptic on the show.

M: I am honored.

S: We appreciate it.

M: I am honored. It was my pleasure.

S: Thank you. We hope to have you back sometime.

M: Yes, definitely.

B: Thank you, Massimo.

P: All right. Thank you, Massimo.

S: And this is Steven Novella. Until next week, this has been the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

SGU Episode 3

2012-11-01T02:06:17Z

Cornelioid: /* Interview with Massimo Pigliucci (16:22) */ proofreading up to 1:04:33

{{transcribing all
|transcriber = Cornelioid
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|episodeDate = 7th June 2005
|episodeIcon = File:Massimo-outdoor.jpg
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|guest1 = M: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massimo_Pigliucci Massimo Pigliucci]
|downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast06-07-05.mp3
|notesLink = http://www.theskepticsguide.org/archive/podcastinfo.aspx?mid=1&pid=3
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== Introduction ==

S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. Today is June 7th, 2005. This is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me this week are Perry DeAngelis –

P: Hello, everybody.

S: – and Bob Novella.

B: Good-evening.

S: We have a special guest this week, Massimo Pigliucci, who i will introduce in a moment. But, first, some follow-up from our discussion last week.

== News Items ==
=== Smithsonian ID Fiasco Follow-Up (0:00:32) ===
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/01/AR2005060101986.html The Washington Post: Smithsonian Distances Itself From Controversial Film]

S: Last week we talked about what is now being known as the Smithsonian Institution ID Fiasco. For those of you who listened, the Smithsonian Institution agreed to co-sponsor a film, which was being promoted by the [http://www.discovery.org/ Discovery Institute], which is an intelligent design creationism proponent. The film was called –

P: Shocking lack of judgment.

P: Shocking.

S: A shocking lack of judgment and, we agreed, it was extremely naïve.

P: Yep.

B: And, Steve, they're more than just proponents. I mean, they are the major arm –

S: Yes.

B: – of the movement.

S: That's correct. They exist to promote intelligent design creationism. The film was [http://www.privilegedplanet.com/ ''The Privileged Planet: The Search for Design in the Universe''], or ''Purpose in the Universe''. As in response to the Smithsonian Institution's plan there was a backlash of criticism from the scientific and skeptical communities –

P: Shocked.

S: – and, which has happened in many cases, as we have discussed in the past, when school boards or institutions, you know, fall prey to either creationism or intelligent design, or are being used for this purpose, the blogosphere jumps on it, the cyberspace skeptical and scientific community can react almost instantaneously. Mr. Randall Kremer, who was the public affairs agent for the Smithsonian Institute, was flooded with emails. They were essentially embarrassed out of co-sponsoring the film, which is, you know, a minor victory for skeptical activism.

B: I mean, they should have been embarrassed.

S: They should've been embarrassed. Here, i'm going to read to you the email that i personally sent to Mr. Kremer –

B: – which, i think, just put it over the edge.

S: Yes.

B: That was the, you know, the straw that made them cave.

S: Clearly it was instrumental –

P: No doubt. No doubt.

S: – in this victory—which is, i think, probably representative of the kind of scientific backlash that they received. So here's the email:

<blockquote>Mr. Kremer,

As a scientist and educator i was very dismayed to hear that the prestigious Smithsonian Institution was co-sponsoring the screening of a film promoting the pseudoscience of intelligent design, ''The Privileged Planet: The Search for Purpose in the Universe''. I strongly urge you to reconsider this. The Discovery Institute is a pseudoscientific organization dedicated to promoting religious belief as science. Intelligent design is a thinly-veiled religious belief system designed deliberately to remove any overt religious references from what is otherwise classic creationism. Its purpose is to infiltrate institutions like SI in order to convince the public that it has scientific credentials. Do not be so naïve, as unfortunately others before you have, in thinking that screening this film at SI will not be used by the Discovery Institute and other promoters of ID as scientific authoritative endorsement of ID. In fact, they are already doing so. You have stated that SI policy is such that events of a religious or partisan political nature are not permitted. I would add to that list egregious pseudoscience. Even if you accept the propaganda that ID is not a religious belief, you must acknowledge the consensus opinion of the scientific community that it is simply not science. Do not let SI be exploited to promote an anti-scientific agenda.</blockquote>

P: Hear, hear.

S: And, again, feedback like that, you know, very – within days forced, embarrassed the Smithsonian Institutiton –

P: Must've – he must've got thousands of those.

S: Must've gotten thousands. I hope so. I mean, we and the New England Skeptical Society did our part in spreading the word and encouraging people to write similar emails.

P: And the JREF, with their financial offer –

S: Yeah, well, Randi only $20,000 to SI to ''not'' show the film. They did not accept his offer –

P: Right.

S: – and, in fact, they declined to accept the $16,000 from the Discovery Institute. So they're getting no money.

B: Well, i –

S: They're showing the film anyway.

B: Steve, i don't think they actually declined to accept it. I think they gave it back.

S: Well – yes, fine. The returned it.

P: My understanding was they returned it. They returned it, yeah.

S: They returned the 16,000 and they removed their co-sponsorship of the film, so – The film is still being screened, you know, at a private function in the Smithsonian Institute, but it's not being sponsored, they're not accepting any funds from them, and clearly the imprimatur, the validation, of a prestigious scientific institution like the Smithsonian Institute has been removed from this film and from the Discovery Institute.

P: So it's 90% good. It's not 100%, it's 90%.

S: And i think that they'll be more wary the next time.

P: Right.

S: The real victory here is that this will not happen again. Hopefully.

P: What were they thinking?

S: What were they thinking?

P: Yeah. It's crazy. Crazy.

S: Just incredible.

== Science or Fiction (0:05:09) ==

S: We are going to also introduce a new segment this week, a segment called "Science or Fiction". In this segment, i am going to challenge my panel of skeptics. I have three news items—scientific breakthroughs, scientific news items—from the past week. I'm going to read you a brief summary of each of those items. The trick is that one of these items is not real. One of these items is fiction. The other two are genuine scientific breakthroughs, one is fiction. The challenge for you two this week is to try to decide which one is the fake one.

P: Mere child's play.

S: You have to bring all of your skeptical tools to bear to see if you can sniff out the fake. You can make your comments about each one as i present them, but wait until i've stated all three before you make your guess as to which one is fake. Are you ready?

B: Mm-hmm.

P: Sure.

S: Let's play.

B: Go for it.

S: [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7475-dolphins-teach-their-children-to-use-sponges.html Item number one]: Dolphins have been observed not only using tools, but also teaching tool use to their children. This is the first example of cultural tool use in a non-primate species. That's item number one.

P: Interesting.

S: Item number two: Astronomers have discovered an Earth-like planet orbiting a nearby star, 50 light years from Earth. This is the first Earth-sized planet discovered around another star, and astronomers say there are indications that the planet has an atmosphere. This is the best candidate so far for extraterrestrial life.

P: How far?

S: It's about 50 light years from our system.

P: All right.

S: [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050605183843.htm Item number three]: French scientists have discovered a way to keep water from freezing at hundreds of degrees below zero—near absolute zero. Those are your three items. What are your thoughts?

B: Wow. I've got problems with all of them.

S: I know. That's why they were chosen.

P: (laughter)

B: OK, the dolphins. You said one thing at the end, though, that piqued my interest there. You said that it's the first non-primate species shown to use tools?

S: Right. Well, cultural tool use. In other words, they're – it's not something that's just innate. They're actually teaching this to their children.

B: OK. 'Cause when you said that, i thought of – 'cause i know there are birds that will actually use tools to –

S: There are. And there're some birds that have some problem-solving skills.

B: Right.

S: But this is – they're actually –

B: It's cultural. There's actually a cultural thing.

S: They were observed teaching the tool use, yes.

B: OK, now i – i mean, since, of course, they don't have any hands or opposable thumbs, i assume they're not using their flippers. It would have to be their mouth. So maybe somehow they're using their mouth to manipulate an object they find on the sea floor. I don't think that's – i don't think that's a fact.

P: As for me, i'm gonna say that the first one is the truth. I recently, within the last week, saw a special, i think on the Discovery Channel. You know, it showed dolphins being very sophisticated, particularly a thing that they showed that really struck me was how two males would team up for a long time and keep a female hostage between the two of them. They'd swim around with her, never let her get very far from them –

B: I've heard of that.

P: – for months –

B: Months?

P: – months, they would keep her, so that she would only mate with them.

S: They're smart critters. They're vey smart critters.

B: Wow.

P: She'd try to get away, they'd attack her and really keep her corralled.

B: Now –

P: Anyway, it sounds accurate to me, the first one.

B: The second one has got to be false. We simply are not at the –

P: Yeah, it's too far.

B: No, not actually.

P: To see an atmosphere?

B: Fifty light years is not too far. It's the actual size that can't be right. Earth-sized planets we simply don't have the technology yet to ascertain the – to determine or to find planets that are Earth-sized. Typically, the only things we find are bigger than actually Jupiter –

P: Yeah.

B: – so we're talking thousands and thousands of times bigger than the Earth.

P: He went beyond that, too, Bob. He said that they had evidence that there was an atmosphere on it. How the heck –

B: Well, that's possible. I mean, you could – i think –

P: Not that size.

B: Well, using something –

S: All it requires is spectroscopic analysis –

B: Right.

S: – of the light coming from the atmosphere.

B: Spectroscopy would tell you if there were certain elements in the atmosphere. That's not what concerns me. It's the size, and that's just too small. We haven't – we're not close to detecting Earth-sized yet.

P: That one sounds false to me.

B: We will get there, though. We'll get there, but we're not there yet. Now, that – it doesn't matter what technique they're using. They could be using, you know, the gravitational disturbance of the parent star caused by the planet.

P: Wobbling.

B: Still, Earth-sized planets are just too small to create a nudge that's detectable yet.

S: Interesting.

P: Now, the last one, about the water. I mean, it's impressive –

B: Let me make one more comment about the second one. The other technique is actually—and it was recently perfected. They've actually – they claim to have discovered a planet that was the first planet discovered purely from the reflected light of the parent star, which was quite an achievement. But, still, that was a huge planet, a huge amount of light, relatively speaking.

S: So you don't think we're ready for this breakthrough yet.

B: No, not yet. We will definitely get there, and maybe relatively soon. Maybe, you know, maybe ten years, six years, but i've heard nothing approaching Earth-sized yet. And, the third one. Perry, did you want to comment on the water?

P: I was simply saying that it's impressive, but it simply seems more reasonable. Not precisely sure how you'd go about doing it.

S: Even though they were French scientists?

(laughter)

P: Yeah, well, we're suspending our disbelief for the moment.

B: At what temperature did you say, Steve? You mentioned near absolute zero.

P: Hundreds of degrees below zero.

S: Single digits.

B: Single degrees near absolute zero?

S: Yeah. Eight degrees was, i think, the figure given.

P: That's crazy.

B: That's – now that's liquid? Liquid water? I don't – no, i don't see that happening. No.

P: You gotta choose between the two of them.

B: I know. That's just too damn cold. I mean, even, you know, moving water can get colder than 32 by the fact that it's moving, will lower the freezing temperature a little bit, but to that degree? Maybe there's some sort of state that can get water into that makes it somewhat immune to freezing, but i can't imagine what that might be. Let's see. What – how could they – what could they possibly do to liquid water to maintain that state?

P: I have – i don't know.

B: – even that close –

P: Move it at an incredibly high speed?

S: So it's time to cast your votes.

B: OK. By definition –

P: Yeah, i'm still – i still think number two is less reasonable.

S: Perry votes for number two, the Earth-sized planet around another star. Bob?

B: Is what, true? Science or fiction?

S: As the fake one. As the fiction.

P: As the fiction. I'm writing that down as –

B: Now, there's two fiction. Aren't there two fiction?

S: No, there's one fiction. There's two are real.

P: Right. I believe that number two is fiction.

B: I could have sworn you said one real, two fiction.

P: Come on, Bob.

S: Two are science, one is fiction.

P: These rules are not complicated, Bob.

B: OK. Then, well, it's gotta be two. Two is definitely fiction.

S: So you both cast your vote for two.

P: Correct.

B: Too small.

S: OK. Well, you are both good skeptics. You got the correct answer.

P: (''inaudible'') we are!

S: You did very well.

P: Now, how did the scientist do that with the water?

B: I'm dying to know.

S: Well, we'll take them in order. Let's take them in order.

P: We'll take them in order.

S: A group of dolphins living off the coast of Australia teach their offspring to use their snouts with sponges while foraging for food in the sea floor. So, they actually put sponges on their noses to protect their – to protect them while foraging on the sea floor.

B: How do they do this?

S: Then they caught – They stick it on there. And then they caught mothers teaching this to their children.

P: Wow. Wow.

B: That's fascinating. So if they get, like, a –

S: You were right. Your intuition was right. It was something – they use their snout, not their flippers.

P: Smart critters.

B: Absolutely. So, if they get, like, a red sponge and stick it to their nose, they look kind of like clownfish? Is that how it works?

P: Bob.

S: I guess so.

P: Badum-bum.

S: This is by Krützen and colleagues. They analyzed thirteen, what they're calling "spongers", and 172 non-spongers, and concluded that the practice seems to be passed along family lines, primarily from mothers to daughters, for some reason.

B: That's very believable. I mean, they're just so intelligent. It seems –

P: Women do most of the work in the animal kingdom. That's why.

B: It seems very likely that they improvised some sort of tool use with their snouts. OK. Makes sense.

S: You're absolutely right with number two. I think that that is eventually going to be a headline –

P: Right.

S: – but it's just a few years too early.

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But Bob is just too up-to-date on the planet-hunting state of the art.

P: Hey, hey! I guessed it, too.

S: You did! But Bob had the details. It's true. You both sniffed that one out.

P: Thank you.

B: Water me! Come on, tell me, what's the (''inaudible'') do this?

S: OK. Here's the headline. You're gonna love it. "Nanotube water doesn't freeze, even at hundreds of degrees below zero."

B: Wow.

S: So, what French scientists have done is, they've – they are using the carbon nanotubes as a template, and the water molecules filling these tubes take on a similar structure, where the hydrogen and oxygen atoms form a lattice-like bond, and they – it will not freeze. It will continue to flow through this tube, even down to near-absolute temperatures.

B: That's fascinating.

P: Hum.

B: My god. It changes the molecular arrangement of the water?

S: Yeah, it actually changes the molecular arrangement of the water.

B: But can you still consider it liquid water, though?

S: You know, it's – that's a good question. I didn't say it remained a liquid. I said it didn't freeze.

B: A-ha! OK.

P: It's true.

S: It may actually be another state of water.

B: That makes more sense.

S: It may not technically be the same state as, you know, normal liquid water.

P: Sort of plasmic?

S: It's not a plasma.

B: No.

S: I mean, it's a new – and i don't know if they're actually going to call it a new ''phase'', but it definitely is a new ''state'' that water is in. And it is more like liquid than like ice. It certainly does not form ice crystals. It stays in this lattice formation and does not, you know, freeze into the normal crystalline structure that water ice has.

B: Yeah. It definitely doesn't sound like any of the other states of matter could account for that. I mean, you couldn't – it doesn't sound liquid to me, it doesn't sound – maybe it's a different type of solid. It's definitely not the other types, like plasma that Perry mentioned, or some of the more exotic ones, the Bose–Einstein condensates and the fermionic condensates. It can't be that, either. So, maybe it's a new type of solid for water. OK.

P: Interesting as heck.

S: Very interesting. It remains to be seen what the applications of this would be, but these nanotubes technology is, you know, very, very new and very, very active area of research, and this is just one example.

B: The applications are – appear to be just utterly mind-boggling for these nanotubes. I've never seen a discovery take off in quite the way that nanotubes has. I mean, just from the get-go, you know, the interest was worldwide, and since then they've found potential applications from computing to fibers to, maybe—to all sorts of applications—electronics. It's amazing how versatile this material appears to be. I think we'll be hearing a lot about nanotubes.

S: Very interesting. Well, it is now time to bring on our guest.

== Interview with Massimo Pigliucci (16:22) ==
[http://rationallyspeaking.org/ Dr. Pigliucci’s website]

S: With us this week is Dr. Massimo Pigliucci, who we simply call our friend (booming voice) Massimo.

P: (laughs)

S: Massimo is Associate Professor of Evolutionary Biology at SUNY Stony Brook in Long Island. He has published over 70 technical papers in evolution and botany. He's written seven books. His most recent non-technical book is ''Denying Evolution''. He's the author of a column in ''Skeptical Inquirer'' magazine called "Thinking About Science", and he's a frequent contributor not only to ''Skeptical Inquirer'' but also ''Skeptic'', ''Free Inquiry'', ''Philosophy Now'', and ''Philosopher's Magazine''. He has a doctorate in genetics from the University of Ferrarra in Italy, a PhD in botany from the University of Connecticut, and a PhD in philosophy from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, Massimo.

M: Thank you for having me. That list always sounds a little bit embarrassing.

(laughter)

S: Yeah, it always is embarrassing to hear somebody else read your own CV.

B: I wish i had such a list.

P: It's daunting, yes.

S: Thank you for being on our show this week. We appreciate it.

M: My pleasure.

S: So, i'm sure you've been following, in the news over the last few weeks, the recent activity of the – our friends, the intelligent design crew –

M: Yes, indeed.

S: – in Kansas City with the – We just got through talking about the Smithsonian Institute debacle –

M: Right.

S: – which, if you hadn't heard, they backed off from cosponsoring the Discovery Institute film.

M: Right. See, sometimes it works.

S: Sometimes it does work. Sometimes it does work.

P: Amen.

S: And, hopefully, people, you know, like the director of the Smithsonian, will think twice before, you know, falling for the Discovery Institute's coy offers in the future. So, what have you been doing recently, in terms of investigating or writing about the intelligent design crew?

M: Well, one thing that i've ''not'' been doing is to go to Kansas for those [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_evolution_hearings scam hearings that they organized with the local Board of Education].

S: Were you invited?

M: Yes, i was actually invited, and i followed the advice of Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education, more or less politely responding that i was – it wouldn't be a good idea for any scientists to participate.

P: So, Massimo, you agree with the basic, what i've been reading, then, in that the scientific community is really refraining from speaking at those hearings? You agree with that?

M: Right. I agree, and that's actually a change of heart for me, because in the past i've been involved in direct debates with creationists, intelligent design proponents, and so on and so forth. Now, under certain circumstances, those debates are actually fun, i guess, and may have a purpose, depending on the venue and the format and so on. But, definitely, in front of a school board, it's not – it doesn't seem like a good idea, because it really, in that case, does provide the other side with some legitimacy that they, frankly, don't deserve.

S: But do you – critics have said – critics of the decision of Eugenie Scott, and you, obviously, and of scientists that she advised, to boycott those hearings, have said that they already have legitimacy by the mere fact that they're before a school board, and then, therefore, shouldn't the mainstream scientific position be represented? What do you say about that?

M: Well, it depends on – i think, when we're talking about legitimacy, it depends on who bestows the legitimacy. It seems to me that one thing is to be invited by a school board, who as we know, is elected, and doesn't necessarily have much of an effect on either science, or education for that matter. Another thing is to be, on the other hand, given some credence from a professional biologist or a professional scientist, and that's what, i guess, we wanted to avoid in this case. Incidentally, the message was, in no uncertain terms, directed mostly to the school board. In other words, we told them that this was not an acceptable way of deciding these sort of matters.

S: Do you think that strategy worked?

M: I think it worked better than the alternative in this particular case. We'll see, of course, what the final outcome of the Kansas equation is.

P: Right.

M: Apparently, in Kansas, there is never a final outcome.

S: Right.

M: They can change their mind every other year.

P: It's true.

S: We thought it was interesting, the other – the unique or new aspect of this case was that the school board's decision, what they've said so far—now, they haven't rendered a final decision—went beyond just the creation–evolution issue to actually redefining science.

M: Which is, of course – right. Which is, of course, what the intelligent design side actually wants. Beginning with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_E._Johnson Phillip Johnson]'s early books, and certainly now with their chief intellectual [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A._Dembski Bill Dembski], what they want is, in fact, to redefine science. And that's an interesting point, which, i guess, we should spend a couple of minutes on. I have often said –i've debated Bill Dembski a couple of times, and we have exchanged opinions in writings as well, and here is Dembski's position, which sounds very reasonable, and i think it's one of the reasons it's so appealing to, sort of, people who don't have much of a philosophical background, even some scientists. His position is the following: He says, look, it used to be that anything – different kinds of potential causes for events were allowed as possible explanations, since the time of Aristotle—Aristotle included final causes, of course, to which intelligent design will belong—as acceptable kind of answers when one wonders about what's going on in the universe. And, then, Dembski says, Bacon came on—the British philosopher—came on the scene in the sixteenth century and decided, more or less arbitrarily, that final causes were out, that science was only a matter of ''how'' and not of ''why'', and, ever since, according to Dembski, science has been impoverished, and it's time to bring things back, essentially, to the wholeness of the Aristotelian approach. Now, that sounds very interesting, except that there are a couple of things that don't work. First of all, Aristotle never used final causes in a way that Bill Dembski will like to begin with.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: But that's a minor point. The major point is this: There was a very good reason why Bacon did – suggested what he suggested, which was, you realize that science wasn't going to get off the ground while it was still messing around with supernatural explanations. If one always had the supernatural card to play, any time that one was sort of running out of options, then science would simply never really be able to make progress in understanding the natural world.

S: Right.

M: So, that's why he said that those kinds of answers are out. Now, that worked very well for about a couple of centuries, especially in physics—Galileo, Newton, and so on. Then, Darwin came to play, and the game changed again, because, in fact, Darwin did contribute what—Dembski maintains—Darwin did reintroduce final causes in science, in biology. The question of why things happen is a fundamental question in evolutionary biology, and it is a perfectly fair question, which is pursued by biologists since Darwin. It's just that we answer in a different way. When we ask, "Why is the eye structured the way it is?", the answer is "Because natural selection favored certain variations on that structure, which worked better for the purpose of visualizing objects, and so on and so forth. In other words, there is a role for "why" questions in biology. It's just that the answer is grammatically different from the one that intelligent design proponents would want to see in – consider as questions in science.

S: Right. "Why" questions are essentially mechanism. "What is the mechanism of this phenomenon?"

M: The long-term mechanisms. So, the distinction here in biology is particularly clear, between "how" questions and "why" questions. So, i can ask those questions, for example, again, about the eye, and if i ask "How does it work?", then what i mean is, "What are the molecular, et cetera, mechanisms that allow the image to be – you know, the light to be captured, the image to be formed and to be sent to the brain, and so on and so forth?" But if i ask, "Why is the eye there to begin with?", then the answer is—regardless of specific mechanisms—the answer is, "Because there is an advantage for certain living organisms to be able to see what – you know, to perceive and understand their surroundings in terms of light waves.

S: Right. So, evolution is the ultimate "why" answer in – for biology, for biological "why" questions.

M: That's right.

S: Dembski and his crowd would like to reintroduce—essentially take us back before Darwin, before Galileo, before Bacon, even—and to reintroduce supernatural or divine causes into scientific questions. What they say is that by not allowing them we're essentially rigging the game against those types of answers.

M: Right.

S: What's your response to that?

M: Well, my response is that – suppose—i actually asked this question to Dembski at one point, at a meeting at the New York Academy of Sciences a couple of years ago—and the question is, OK, well, suppose, for a moment, that, in fact, we do allow intelligent design, in the sense that Dembski means, back into science. So suppose that i'm going to be, all of a sudden, the director of the National Science Foundation, and i decide to give, you know, three million dollars, over a period of five years, to Dembski—which is a pretty good grant by NSF standards—and i ask him, "What would you do? What sort of experiments would you set up? What sort of empirical hypotheses would you be able to test?" And he had no answer.

P: It's a good question.

M: Yeah! He had no answer.

S: Of course he has no answer. Yeah.

M: So, that is why, i think – so, i guess, to go back to your question, there are two different kinds of answers to "Why is it that the supernatural is out by definition?", essentially. One is the pragmatic one, the one that i just provided. You know, from the point of view of practical scientists, i want to see, you know, the proof is in the pudding. What is he going to do? Suppose that i do give you the money. What sort of hypotheses can you test? And, of course, the answer, again, is "None.", because, by definition, of course, the supernatural agent can do whatever the heck he wants –

S: Right.

M: – and, so, there's no way to predict, and therefore to test, what he's going to do. The other answer is, i think, a little deeper, and that's the philosophical answer—and, as you know, most scientists are not particularly well-versed in philosophy—but the philosophical answer is this: It is a matter of principle, once that you invoke the supernatural, you will not be able to propose empirically testable hypotheses. In other words, it's not just a matter of Bill Dembski's limited imagination, or anybody else's limited imagination, that at the moment we can't think of one, but give me enough time and i'll come up with one. A philosopher would argue that, as a matter of principle, if you abandon the position of methodological naturalism in science, you're dead. You're not doing science anymore. You're maybe doing something else—you might be doing theology, you might be doing some sort of philosophy—but you're certainly not doing science. And it is that difference, of course, between philosophical and methodological naturalism, that is very important, is apparently a little subtle for most people –

S: Right.

M: – but it's very important in terms of this debate.

S: Right, and they either don't get it or don't want to get it.

M: Right. (laughs) I do have the suspicion sometimes that they don't want to get it.

S: They don't want to get it. Because, you know, how many times can you explain it to them –

M: Right.

S: – and to really not understand it, you know, stretches the imagination.

M: Right. I mean, i can see how some people with no background in either science or philosophy might be a little puzzled by this difference, which, by the way, we should probably explain, but somebody like Bill Dembski, who does, actually, in fact, have a degree in philosophy, it's hard to believe that he doesn't understand the implications of that distinction.

S: Right, and i've had the same experience as you. If you remember, we were together at the [http://business.highbeam.com/5799/article-1G1-91236216/fourth-world-skeptics-conference-burbank-lively-foment World Skeptics Conference] a couple of years ago –

M: Yeah.

S: – and i had the opportunity to ask, i think it was Nelson –

M: Mm-hmm.

S: – a similar kind of question –

M: Yeah, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Nelson_(creationist) Paul Nelson].

S: – and what he said was that, you know, you cannot question the mind of god. If i say – which means, as you just said, any hypothesis about intelligent design—about the intelligent designer—that you could seek to test or falsify is rendered unfalsifiable by that statement –

M: Right.

S: – because you can't ask the question, "What would, or what should, the world look like if it were designed by an intelligent designer?", because there's no answer to that question. The answer is, "It looks like whatever it looks like." –

M: Right.

S: – and, therefore, it's not falsifiable, and, therefore, not science.

M: Correct. There is –

B: But couldn't –

S: You know they have to understand that.

M: Right. There is a caveat there—which, of course, is something that Dembski either as a matter of – either on purpose or because he really doesn't see the difference, he insists on this point—he says, "But, look: There's plenty of good science that is done under the assumption of intelligent design." He talks about forensic science, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and so on and so forth. And, of course, he's right: That kind of science—archeology, for example—''is'' done under the presumption of intelligent design. But, in those cases, you can, in fact, question the mind of the designer.

S: Right.

M: In fact, the whole point is that you do know, or at least make hypotheses about –

B: Excellent.

M: – what the designer is doing and why –

S: Right.

M: If you couldn't do that, then there would be no archeology, no SETI –

S: Right,

M: – and no forensic science.

S: Exactly.

P: Exactly.

B: That's a good point.

M: And, so, ''intelligent design'' is a little too broad of a term in –

S: So it's a false analogy on their part.

M: That's right. Exactly. It is.

S: I've always – it's always struck me, too, that it's one enormous logical fallacy. Now, we keep track of logical fallacies on the show. We actually have our [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/resources/logicalfallacies.aspx top 20 list of logical fallacies] –

M: (laugter)

S: – which you can read on our website. It's at [http://www.theness.com/ theness.com]. There's a couple that they're using here. One, of course, is the argument from ignorance: "We don't know something, therefore god did it."

M: Right.

S: And we – specifically, in this type of explanation, you can also call that the "god of the gaps" argument.

M: Right.

S: But it's also confusing ''currently unexplained'' with ''unexplainable''. Again, that's sort of, "The current gap of knowledge, that's what god did."

M: Right.

S: And, as that gap retreats, and the ever-advancing, you know, knowledge of science, god still fills whatever gaps and crevices are currently unexplained as if they never will be explained –

M: Right.

S: – even though, tomorrow, they ''are'' explained.

M: I would make, also, an even third-level distinction. That is, there are two kinds of unexplainable questions or phenomena.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: There is the impossibility to explain something because, in fact, there is, essentially, no explanation within the realm of natural laws—which is the sort of unexplainable phenomenon that Dembski likes—but there is also what philosophers call ''epistemic unexplainability''. There may be some things out there that are explainable in the sense that there ''is'' an answer somewhere, but, because of the limitations, both current and for possibly future human understanding and human reason, we might never be able to get the answer.

S: Right.

M: So, one possible –

B: It's like a dog –

M: Yes.

B: It's like a dog trying to understand calculus.

M: That's right. Exactly.

B: It's never going to happen.

M: And there are some interesting possible examples within science. So, for example, the question of the origin of life ''may'' fall into that category—not because the origin of life is unexplainable in principle—i don't think it is—and, of course, we ''may'' explain it. I mean, you know, next week, we may see an article in ''Science'' or ''Nature'', somebody has actually come up with the right answer. But it may also be the sort of thing that is epistemically unexplainable by human beings simply because there's very, if any, clues left, essentially. You know, something that happened four billion years ago. There are no fossils. We have very little understanding, or way to get decent information, about what the conditions actually were. So we might never be able to answer that question. But that—even that, even granting that—it still doesn't bring you any closer to the necessity of a supernatural explanation.

S: Right, right. Once again, we are speaking to Massimo Pigliucci, philosopher and evolutionary scientist, and author of many articles and books. We've been talking about the intelligent design phenomenon and proponents of intelligent design, which brings us, really, to the philosophical underpinnings of science itself—What is the difference between science and religion, philosophically?—and we've brought up some terms like "philosophical naturalism"—our organization, for example, advocates what i would call "scientific skepticism"—and there are some subtle differences between these types of philosophies. You've written several reviews and articles, for example, criticizing [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould Stephen Jay Gould]'s summary, or summation –

M: Right.

S: – of the relationship between science and religion.

M: Right.

S: Gould came up with this idea of "non-overlapping magesteria", in which both science and religion occupy different –

B: Domains of knowledge.

S: – intellectual domains—right, different domains of knowledge he calls "magesteria"—and they each serve their purpose. You're very – you have been very critical of this idea.

M: Well, for plenty of reasons. I mean, there's not – i should probably start out by saying that i am not a Gould-hater like some of my colleagues. I really like some of the stuff that Stephen Gould wrote, both technical and non-technical, and i really dislike some of the other stuff. In particular, about religion, there are a couple of things that really, i think, are worth considering in that context. First of all, Gould did not come up with the basic idea that you mention, although he did come up with the fancy name, but that idea goes back, essentially, all the way to St. Augustine.

S: Yes, and he acknowledges that, to be fair, yeah.

M: Right. Now, the basic idea, however, is, i think, a bit misleading, for two reasons: Number one, because it hinges on the definition of "god", which Gould leaves kind of up in the air for most of that book. At one point, he finally has to come to terms with the fact that, well, in fact, there are some conceptions of god that do go head-on against science. For example, if you are a Young Earth Creationist who believes that there was a worldwide flood four thousand years old – ago, then, i'm sorry, science just tells you you're wrong. And, if your belief in god hinges on that particular belief then you're dead in the water. So even Gould had to acknowledge that it really depends on what you mean by "god" and what particular version of "god" you're espousing, which is, of course, very different from the question of science. There are no different varieties of science that we're talking about here. It's either you're – you know, scientists disagree on specific theories, but there is, essentially, one body of methods and knowledge that we call "science". On the other hand, religion is an incredibly heterogeneous body of beliefs. So, one has to, at least, to be clear on what one means, because it sounds very nice, it sounds very ecumenical, to say, "Well, science and religion can be different areas of expertise, and let's just keep them separate." Well, it depends. But even within the kind of religion that does not have any direct conflict with science—So, suppose you're, you know, a progressive Catholic. You know, the Pope. The previous Pope, John Paul II, as we know, did acknowledge that the Catholic Church does not have much of a problem—have a problem at all—with the modern theory of – biological theory of evolution.

S: Right.

M: OK. Well, that sounds very good. That still does not amount to say that there's no overlap at all between the two areas of intellectual endeavor. For one thing, because part of science is now getting, actually, to the point of providing explanations, at least tentative explanations, for where religious beliefs and morality come from to begin with.

P: Mm-hmm.

M: Now, i'm not a particular defender of evolutionary psychology, either, but the ideas are out there. And the fact that the ideas are out there means that science is, in fact, beginning to encroach in the area – on the area of morality, and religious beliefs, and so on and so forth. Should we kick it out, just because we feel uncomfortable about it, or because some people feel uncomfortable about it? I don't think so. That's not to say that current ideas about evolution are more likely or necessarily correct, but it's just that it is worth exploring as a possibility.

S: Right.

M: And, lastly, there – the last thing that really, i guess, prompted my disagreement with Gould, is that he seems to somehow have forgotten that there is a whole different area of human knowledge, or human intellectual endeavor, that greatly overlaps, and often contradicts, some religious positions, and that's, of course, philosophy—particularly moral philosophy. So, to say, as he says in that book, that morality is the province of religion—well, wait a minute. Actually, morality is the province of a lot of different kinds of activities—as i said a minute ago, even possibly science—but certainly not ''only'' religion. So, in other words, the situation, it seems to me, is a lot more complicated than the nice and, you know, neat distinction that Gould was trying to make.

S: Yeah, i agree. He did see – he did go out of his way to sort of overstate the historical non-overlapping of science and religion, and it struck me that you have to sort of, you know, turn a blind eye to all of the cases of – you know, religion, essentially, completely dominated science, was ''the'' explanation for the natural world, and has had to retreat territory, if you will, to scientific explanations and the institution of science. But, do you think you could, you know, rescue a legitimate point from Gould's position by saying that what he's describing is not the historical relationship between science and religion but what the relationship should be—in other words, that religion ''should'' avoid overlapping with science and ''should'' restrict itself to the domains of morality and to the great unanswerable questions of existence that are inherently not explainable or not explorable by scientific methods? What would you say to that?

M: I think that is a fair point. However, the question then can also be asked the other way around: Should science be restricted from inquiries into morality and religious beliefs and so on?

S: Well, you could – as we were saying with the intelligent design thing, there are some questions that are simply outside the realm of science –

M: Right.

S: – and you can argue that, well, if, once you're outside the realm of science by, you know, methodological naturalism, then, you know, that is the domain of faith. You're free to have any arbitrary belief or faith that you choose, because these are questions that are inherently outside of the scientific realm. For example, you may – some people believe that the question of whether or not god exists—or any power or entity or ''thing'' that is outside of the natural laws of the universe, not bound by nature, if you will—that that's an inherently unanswerable question by science and therefore is in the realm of faith.

M: Right.

S: Would you agree with that non-overlapping aspect?

M: Right. Yes, i would agree with that nonoverlapping – i'm afraid, however, that that would leave very little outside, in fact, of the realm of science, and i'm perfectly happy – if people are happy with that conclusion –

S: Yes.

M: – i'm fine to go along with it. But the kind of questions—the kind of encroaching of science into the territory of religion and morality that i was referring to—does not deal directly with the question of the existence of god—which, you're right, it's by definition outside the realm of science. But there are other things that are close enough to really bother a lot of religious believers that science is now beginning to encroach upon.

S: Right.

M: So, suppose that we do come up, eventually, with a very reasonable, very serious theory of how morality—a sense of morality, at least, and even possibly some certain specific moral rules—evolved by natural selection among primates and (''inaudible'') you know, groups or societies.

S: Right.

M: Well, you know, is that encroaching on religion, or not?

S: Well, this is what i would say to this—and this is – i've certainly heard humanists and others take this approach—that science deals with statements of fact—what is the state of history, the state of nature—whereas morality deals with statements of value. So, whenever you have to make a value judgment, that is a question that can be informed—factually informed—by science, but cannot be made scientifically.

M: Mm-hmm.

S: So, that is a very practical and real place to draw the line—again, to map out these domains.

M: Right. So, what you're referring to is what, in philosophy, is known as the naturalistic fallacy, which was discussed originally by David Hume. The idea was, in fact, that you cannot go from what ''is'' to what ''ought to be'' –

S: Right.

M: – from a matter of fact to a matter of value. OK. Now, i have actually taken that position myself in the past and, quite frankly, at this moment i keep vesseling back and forth.

S: Right.

M: So, don't necessarily hold me to what i'm about to say in a few months, because i may change my mind again. But, there is some interesting situations here that need to be discussed. So, while i will certainly grant that there are – there is a large area of specific moral decisions that are very far from anything that science can say at the moment, there are some particular moral values—particular moral rules—that seem to be, in fact, fairly straightforwardly explainable by science. For example, there is a whole area now in philosophy of ethics and philosophy of morality that looks at the use of optimality models—game theoretical models—to predict what sort of behavior would be optimal in a group of individuals, given certain constraints. This is a sort of mathematical modeling that has been done in evolutionary biology for a long time, but until recently, it has not been applied, in fact, directly to questions of human morality. Well, it turns out that when people have—in the last three or four years, there've been a series of papers in major science magazines—when people have, in fact, applied that kind of game-theoretical approach to realistic situations and have actually tested their predictions, with actual real human beings, the funny thing that turned out is that the models were able to predict, very closely, what real human beings would consider – how they would act and what they would consider moral or nonmoral. That raises the question that some kinds of human behavior—human morality, such as our attitude toward killing people, or our attitude toward cheating, and so on and so forth—those actually may be a matter of fact, meaning that they are the expected outcome of the evolution of a society of a certain kind of (''inaudible''), certain kinds of animals, capable of thinking in fairly abstract manners and so on and so forth. If that is the case, seems to me that that approach begins to break down—it may not entirely break down, but it begins to at least blur the line—between factual and value judgments, because now the value judgment is predictable and explainable in terms of facts about nature.

S: Yeah, i agree that there are certain things that we, as human beings, value, and the evolutionary psychologists are certainly engaged in an attempt to explain why we make those value judgments—again, the evolutionary "why" –

M: Right.

S: – What was the advantage for us having these value judgments?—so – but i'm not sure i agree that having a causal evolutionary "why" to those values makes them not values. Again, i said that would – for me, that's science ''informing'' the value judgment. But we still place a value on life, we place a value on ''human'' life, and then we get to – there is some point where you have to make a judgment call. For example, how much relative value should we place upon animal life versus human life?

M: Right.

S: How much relative value should we place upon the life of an embryo versus the life of a mother?

M: Now, i think you're – i think you're right.

S: Science can inform these questions, but it ultimately comes down to a value judgment –

M: Right.

S: – that is outside the realm of pure empiricism.

M: I think you're right, but the way that, therefore, i would see it is not as clear a line of separation between facts on one hand and values on the other. I would see some values as actually explainable entirely, or in large part, as the result of facts of nature—for example, again, the kind of society – the kind of animal that we are, actually. Other values, are, on the other hand – may be informed by facts discovered by science but not entirely explained by it, and then there may be—but probably there very likely are—certain areas of moral judgment, such as, probably, the one you just touched upon, that is, how do we treat other animals—that are, in fact, essentially entirely outside the explanations of evolutionary biology.

S: Right.

M: That, to me, brings up an interesting model, however, of sort of a continuum between fact and value, rather than a sharp distinction.

S: I agree, which is true in so much of, you know, intellectual distinctions.

M: Right.

S: It's a fuzzy continuum, not a sharp demarcation. But that doesn't mean—and that's actually another logical fallacy –

M: Right.

S: – the false continuum—that doesn't mean that there isn't a distinction to be made at the extremes –

M: Right.

S: – that there aren't certain questions that are pretty purely factual and other questions that are pretty purely, you know, value judgments or moral, if you want to use that term.

M: Yes, i think you're right. But the question that concerns us as skeptics and scientists and so on is, well, how many people are going to be happy with this idea of a continuum? Now, it may be that a lot of people are simply going to be very unhappy with the idea that there is any continuity at all –

S: Right.

M: – and, you know, how do we....?

S: You know, i agree, but i think that this is such a critical, core intellectual concept that i don't think you can water it down.

M: Right.

S: I think we just have to, through education, get people to think in a little bit more complex way, and to appreciate the concept of continuum, because i just can't imagine dispensing with it or trying to teach concepts with a false dichotomy –

M: Right.

S: – without giving people the appreciation for how to think about continuum with, you know, pseudoscience on one end and science at the other end, and with a continuum in between, for example. And, again, pretty much anything you can – any distinction you can think to make is really probably a continuum and not a sharp demarcation.

M: Right. Right.

S: So, i agree with you that that's a very common fallacy that people fall into, and i think we just need to force our way through with education, to make these kinds of decisions.

M: Which brings us to the question of what kind of an education? And, as you know, there have been – there's been a lot of talk about, we need more science education and we need more scientific education will help solving these kind of problems. And, over the years, i've become convinced that, actually, we don't need more science education—at least not the kind of science education we're doing at the moment.

S: Right, we need better standards of care.

B: Critical thinking skills.

M: Or different. I think we need quite a different kind of science education, because, still today, a lot of our science education is—especially in disciplines such as biology, much less so in areas such as physics—but biology is, to a large extent, you know, a factual – applied in a factual manner.

S: Right.

M: So, you know, really, an introductory course in biology, it's almost as charming as the yellow pages. I mean, you just, you know, start with A and end with Z. And there is very little that we do to actually train our students and our children toward the real objective to education, which i think is critical thinking abilities.

B: Yeah.

M: Now, it is true, of course, that you cannot think on an empty mind, so (''inaudible'') critical thinking about something, you actually do have to know ''some'' of the facts.

S: Right.

M: But i really don't believe the model that the facts – that the critical thinking is simply going to be the result of seepage through an ocean of facts. I don't think we need the ocean of facts.

S: No, yeah, i agree. Clearly, the critical thinking—theory, understanding, and logic—does not flow naturally from just memorizing a bunch of facts.

M: Right.

S: There are certainly people that know lots of facts but have no real understanding—like, oh, Creationists, for example –

M: Right. Yes.

S: – or anyone that we would think of as a crank, you know. We know these people. They have all this factual knowledge, but they just don't get it.

M: Right.

S: At the same time, empty theories—you know, you tend to drift off into La La Land if you don't have some actual empirical facts to anchor you to reality.

M; That's right.

S: So, it's an interaction, an intimate interaction between the two: theory and fact working together hand-in-hand. That's – that is what we need to teach kids, and that's why intelligent design and creationism is such a – would be such a critical blow—and ''has'' been, in fact, a critical blow—to the quality of our science education, 'cause it really undercuts that relationship.

M: Right. Yes. You cannot – it's hard to exercise critical thinking when one of the possibilities on the table is that a supernatural being just did it. "And, why did he do it?" "Well, because he felt like it."

S: Right.

M: "And, how did he do it?" "Well, who knows? He was supernatural."

S: Right.

M: Well, there's not much you can go on from that kind of premise, obviously.

S: You mention that you weren't a big fan of evolutionary psychology –

M: Right.

S: – which is basically the discipline of trying to explain human motivations, and beliefs, and morality in evolutionary terms. What's your beef with that?

M: Well, the idea, i think, is sound—meaning that – you know, the basic idea is that, look, human beings are, of course, one kind of animal, and, as all other animals on Earth, we have an evolutionary history. We evolved by natural selection, among other mechanisms, over a long period of time, and so it's only logical to think that natural selection did not shape just our physical bodies, but it also shaped some of—at least, in part—our mental abilities.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: We know that natural selection can shape and change the behavior of a lot of animals, so why not humans?

S: Right.

M: So, the basic premise, i think, is fundamentally sound. The problem is this: Since, of course, as we know, behavior, especially humanly interesting behaviors, don't fossilize. They don't leave much of a fossil record.

S: Right.

M: Since we don't have – (''glitch'') – and the solution is made worse by the fact that there are no close relatives—phylogenetically speaking, evolutionarily speaking—to human beings alive today. You know, our closest relatives are chimpanzees and bonobos, which have diverged from us several million years ago. That's not even close by any standard of so-called phylogenetic comparative analysis. So we don't have – of course, there ''were'' other species of humans, but they all, for one reason or another, died off some time ago.

S: Well, let me just pause there for a minute, though. Have you – did you read [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan Carl Sagan]'s book ''Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors''?

M: Yes, mm-hmm.

S: So, i mean, actually, his line of argument in that book was looking at the behavior of chimps and primates to see if we can infer anything about human psychological evolutionary ancestors.

M: Right. Right, well –

S: So, you're not saying that we can't get ''any'' value from looking at chimps and our closest relatives?

M: No. No, i'm not saying that we can't get any value, but i'm saying that we can get very little value, for the following reason, and with all due respect to Carl Sagan, but – the reason is this: At best, we have a phylogenetic group—you know, close relatives—of three or four species. Right? You know, if you count the two species of chimpanzees and one gorilla.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: And that's simply not enough for any serious comparative phylogenetic analysis. In fact, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetic_comparative_methods comparative phylogenetics] is – has been a booming discipline in evolutionary biology for the last twenty years, but all the best studies that have been done in comparative phylogenetic studies usually include a large number of species that are fairly closely related to each other—meaning, at a minimum, twenty or thirty. The reason for that is because then you can apply statistical techniques that have been, you know, developed over the last several years.

S: Right.

M: The problem, therefore, with the case of humans is not that it's impossible in – as a matter of principle, or that these are particularly unsound ideas. It just happens that we're pretty unlucky in terms of number of comparisons we can make.

S: Right.

M: Now, that said, of course, yes, one can look at the behavior of chimpanzees or bonobos—which, by the way, are very different from each other and equally –

S: Right.

M: equally related to us—but, and, of course, get some clues or some interesting ideas, some interesting suggestions, about how certain human behaviors, or certain human traits have evolved. So, if, in fact, we were doing – if evolutionary psychology were a branch of philosophy, ''informed'' by science—that is, it's a way to build plausible stories about the origin of certain human traits, and you know what? We cannot really test them rigorously, but these are plausible—then i'm perfectly happy with them. In fact, that's exactly what i said a few minutes ago in this broadcast when i was talking about possible ideas about the evolution of morality, and so on and so forth.

S: Right.

M: But, the problem comes to me because when evolutionary psychologists really make a hard pitch for the idea that theirs is, in fact, a quantifiable science of empirically testable hypotheses. Largely, though not entirely, it's not. And it's not, not because of their fault, but because of the reality of the situation. We only have a few species to compare, not enough to carry out statistical tests, and we have otherwise very little information about what human environments were like—especially social environments were like—during the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene Pleistocine]. We have next to nothing in terms of knowledge of what humans actually did, behaved, or thought at the time.

S: Right.

M: And so, you know, to me, evolutionary psychology, at the moment—and i don't see how this is going to change any time soon—is an interesting way of thinking about how certain human traits may have come about, but it is really not a science in the satisfactory sense of the term.

S: Now, there's one other method that you didn't comment on, that might be more plausible for evolutionary psychology, and that is looking at the phenotypic expression, if you will, throughout currently existing human populations. So, although we only have one species, we do have a number of races, we have a number of isolated cultures, and what evolutionary psychologists do is look for those psychological traits which seem to be universal among humans, despite vast disparities in culture, and that is one other window onto evolutionary psychology. What do you think about that?

M: Yeah, again, that is a really reasonable approach, and a reasonable approach that was used by evolutionary biologists in – when they study other species. In some sense, however, it suffers from the opposite problem from the one we were just talking about. So, if we're talking about long-term evolution, as we said a minute ago, we're missing a sufficient number of comparisons. If we're talking about very, very short-term evolution—so we're talking about evolution within ''homo sapiens''—perhaps we can actually understand something about differences between existing populations of humans. But, when it comes down to how those universals that you were talking about actually get involved—you know, were they the result of natural selection, or of other evolutionary processes—there are evolutionary processes that are not selective in nature, so, for example, you know, random drift is the result of simply fixing certain genes in certain small populations—we know that human beings—we know from molecular data—that the human population at certain times in its history was, in fact, small enough to cause that sort of random drift of characteristics—so, for any particular camp that we see today, we're not going to be in a position to know if it was the result of natural selection—as, of course, evolutionary psychologists will maintain—or the result of, essentially, historical accidents. And that is, by the way, the one-million-dollar question in evolutionary biology, you know, how do you discriminate between selective histories and random accidents.

S: Right.

M: The way, usually, again, biologists do it is when they either have a very detailed level of information in the fossil record, or when they have a lot of closely related species. I can tell you one example: Look, this may be a little – the example itself is a little technical, but it's, i think, very illuminating about the sort of things that we would like to be able to do in evolutionary psychology, and that, i think, at the moment, at least, we can't do. One of the best examples published in the last few years of competitive phylogenetic studies in non-human animals was the – a study that dealt with the question of why certain fish have – the male fish have a long tail, which seems to be attractive to females. So, these are swordtail fish, which you can buy for your aquarium. And, it has been known for a long time that females have a preference for males that have a long tail. Well, the question was this: Did the preference evolve first, or did the tail evolve first? And how are you going to answer that sort of question? You cannot answer it by looking at variation within the current species, because you will find males with longer or shorter tails, and you will find females with more or less preference for long tails, but you won't be able—since they're all mixed around—you can't tell which one came first.

S: Right.

M: The way they solved this problem—this was an extremely elegant piece of work—they looked at – these researchers looked at the fifteen or twenty most closely-related species to the swordtail fish. Some of these species have the tail—the very close relatives—and some of them don't. The males don't have the tail. So, if you trace back the evolution of the tail, you will find that, at one point, a certain, you know, number of million years ago, there were fish that were closely related to the swordtail which did not have the tail. Turns out, however, that their females have the preference. So, if you expose the female of some close relatives without the tail, to a male that has an artificial tail, they'll go for it. That is a very strong indication that, in fact, the female preference evolved before the tail –

S: Before the tail.

M: Right. And the tail evolved as a result of the fact that, for whatever reason—which we don't know at the moment—some females did have that preference. Now, that's a beautiful example of how you can figure out, in fact, how natural selection can favor certain not only morphological traits, such as the tail, but certain – but interacts with behavioral traits, such as female preference. That's exactly the sort of stuff that evolutionary biologists would ''die'' to have in human species.

S: Right.

M: And, the problem, again, is that, unfortunately, we don't have twenty or twenty-five species to play with.

S: Right. One more attempt to rescue evolutionary psychology.

M: (laughter) OK!

P: (laughter)

S: One more attempt, and that is: computer models, where you essentially take preferences and subject them to computer evolutionary models, and then see what those – what advantages—survival advantages—those psychological preferences result in –

M: Right.

S: – to see how—''statistically'', how—that matches actual human preferences and human behavior. What do you think about that approach?

M: Right. Again, that's a very reasonable approach, and, in fact, actually, among the ones we've discussed so far, is probably the best.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: That goes back to the game-theoretical models of evolution of morality, actually, that i was mentioning some time earlier.

S: Right.

M: Again, those are very suggestive. And, you know, whenever we do get a match between a reasonably-built mathematical model and a reasonably valid –

S: Calibrated data.

M: Yeah, calibrated data, then – of course, that's a very interesting finding. It, by itself, of course, is not conclusive, but it's a heck of an interesting find. Now, that said, there are caveats there, too. Number one: Those models do depend, a lot, on the assumptions that are embedded in the parameters. So, the costs, for example, to fitness.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: And those assumptions are often just a guess of the modeler. You know, they're difficult to just find independently from an empirical perspective. This is not just for humans. It's a problem with game-theoretical models in general. The other thing is, again, it's difficult to get very reliable or meaningful data from modern human populations, because modern human populations, unfortunately, are, by and large, so mixed up, in terms of cultural values and influences. And, also, it's very difficult to measure fitness in modern environments. And, in fact, one can make the argument that fitness in modern environments is essentially irrelevant to the question, because what we really want to know is, what were the fitness payoffs in the Pleistocene –

S: Right.

M: – you know, during the time in which these traits really did evolve? Those fitness payoffs and trade-offs may have been very, very different from the ones you can measure today in modern human populations. So, again, it's not hopeless, but what i would like to stress is that i think evolutionary psychologists have a heck of a long way to go, and they don't seem—at least, i don't want to make a blanket statement here, but a lot of them don't seem—to be particularly concerned (let's put it this way) about these sort of limitations, which have been pointed out to them by a variety of sources.

S: So, just to change gears a little bit, reading through your website—which, by the way, if i didn't mention it earlier, you have a website called [http://rationallyspeaking.org/ rationallyspeaking.org], which has a large number of essays covering evolutionary biology, creationism and intelligent design, philosophy, and you even venture out into the misty world of politics, which we don't deal with too much on this show—but i did notice that you wrote an essay about a topic which is – a humorous topic of interest to skeptics, about the Brights phenomenon fiasco a couple of years ago.

M: Oh, yes.

S: Now, just a very a quick history: A couple of years ago, a couple of humanists came up with the idea of essentially renaming those people who take a naturalistic worldview, who believe that there's nothing supernatural or paranormal in the world, and rather than being labeled with the negative terms that we've been stuck with—atheist, and skeptic –

P:

S: – that have a lot of negative connotations—to come up with a positive term, modeling this after the gay community essentially branding themselves as "gay", to basically engender a more positive outlook. Now, you wrote an article a couple of years ago, in 2003, essentially praising this movement and this idea.

M: Mm-hmm.

S: It seems to me that it hasn't really taken off in the last couple of years. Has your opinion of this changed at all since then?

M: Yeah, this is one of those areas in which i'm afraid – it was a good idea, but, as you said, it hasn't worked, and probably it hasn't worked partially for the very reasons that were pointed out by critics at the beginning, which is: The parallel with the gay community is in fact compelling. I think the analysis there is correct –

S: Right.

M: – that part of what helped—really, not the entire thing, but part of what helped—creating a positive image for the gay community is, in fact, the decision to call themselves gay. However—and, therefore, you know, something like "brights" sounds like a bright idea, as initial reactions went—however, unfortunately, "bright", especially in the ???, has a very different connotation than "gay". You know, nobody would disagree with being called "gay", no one would consider somebody a snob because they consider themselves gay.

S: Right.

M: The word "bright", on the other hand, of course, especially for certain people—and, i must say, especially in a country like the United States, with a long history of several different currents of anti-intellectualism—to consider oneself "bright", and actually vocally say so, it's obviously, if it's not the ultimate sin, it's pretty close to it. So, i suppose that's the reason the thing has not worked, and, therefore, i would like to concede that, yes, it probably wasn't exactly as bright an idea as it sounded at the beginning.

P: (laughter)

S: Yeah, it kinda struck us as misguided, and even other early supporters like Michael Shermer have backed off. He wrote a commentary saying that, basically, this was an attempt at rebranding –

M: Right.

S: – and it was done without any marketing research, and without – not even an email to the community saying, "Hey, what do you guys think about this?" Their defense was, well, we didn't want to do things by committee, it would have taken forever, and sometimes you just have to do things –

M: Right.

S: – to get them done. But, they really tried to impose a term onto a very – certainly independently-thinking group of people by fiat, and i thought it was doomed at the outset—especially, as you point out, you know, calling oneself "gay" is not an automatic offense to those people who are – to whom you are not referring, because they will not – being ''not'' gay is not an insult.

M: That's right. Not being bright –

S: Not being bright – yeah, "You're not bright." That is – so, no one is ever going to buy into a term that's an implied insult to everybody else.

M: Yes.

S: So, i thought, for that reason, it was kind of doomed to failure.

M: Yep.

S: It does bring up an interesting question, though: What ''do'' we call ourselves? I mean, one thing that's interesting that came out of the "bright" bruhahah was that, you know what? No one came up with a good alternate.

M: Right.

S: I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.

M: Well, so, first of all, it depends on what you mean by "ourselves", because, as you know, the skeptic community, for example, does include some people who ''are'' believers in some sort of supernatural –

S: Yeah, exactly.

M: In that case, you know, i don't want to use the term, for example, "secular humanist", because those people certainly wouldn't consider themselves that way. So, i think my answer to that is two-fold: On the one hand, i don't think we need ''one'' term, because we do actually have a large – several different kinds of constituencies that are – they join efforts in certain areas. Again, skepticism is one of them.

S:

M: You don't have to have – be a nonbeliever in order to be a skeptic in most areas of, you know, science and pseudoscience and so on. The other thing is, when people ask ''me'' what i am, normally i just call myself a "humanist"—not ever using the world "secular" because, at this point, there is essentially – there are no non-secular humanists, as far as i'm concerned, anyway.

S: There are no divine humanists?

M: There are no divine humanists. Even though, of course, you know that that's how the term originated in the Renaissance. There were ''only'' divine humanists, you know, religious humanists.

S: Right.

M: But, as far as i'm concerned, the term "humanist" is good enough to describe what i believe. I don't subscribe to any supernatural power out there, certainly none that is concerned with any human affairs, and, therefore, i am optimistic about, despite all the evidence, about what human beings can do. And, so, the word "humanist" fits pretty well.

S: Right.

M: If we're not talking about metaphysics, then i call myself a skeptic, because i think it still is the best term, especially if you want to glorify, the skeptic is not somebody who always says "no". It's a positive skepticism in the sense of David Hume.

S: Right.

M: A skeptic is somebody who entertains ideas and subjects them to rational and empirical scrutiny instead of either accepting them without hesitation or rejecting them outright.

S: I agree. I mean, i think – i'm happy to call myself a skeptic. Sometimes i'll modify it by saying i'm a scientific skeptic, but it's basically a skeptic. In terms of religious beliefs, i call myself an agnostic. But i've basically accepted the fact that, no matter what i call myself, i'm going to have to explain it a little bit.

M: Yes.

S: There is no one term that does not require some explanation. But, you know, that's the nature of this whole endeavor. There's a certain amount of complexity to our philosophy and our beliefs, and they defy a single, especially monosyllabic, label, right?

M: And, in fact, that's not a bad idea at all, because the fact that we have to explain ourselves as soon as we label ourselves is actually a good thing, because it implies that, look, part of what we are about is engaging in a discourse with people and educating people about certain aspects of thinking. So, yeah, it does require explanation, and i wouldn't want to see a badge in which it wouldn't require an explanation.

S: Right.

M: It's – explanations are good. They engage people in discussions.

S: Yeah, although, admittedly, the downside to that is when you're trying to market a magazine like ''Skeptical Inquirer'' or ''Skeptic'', or you're trying to sell an organization like the New England Skeptical Society, there is a branding, or a marketing, issue here. You do want a term that's going to be looked at initially positively, or at least curiously, and not have an initial negative reaction.

M: Sure.

S: I think that, culturally, historically, almost anything that would reasonably define us—and, again, as you point out, "us" is lots of different things, but with just a very loose philosophical connection—that anything that would define us probably has some negative baggage that goes along with it.

M: True. But that, again, could be worse. I mean, i just got from Paul Kurtz this nice certificate that says that i'm a ____. Now, there's a term that is not going anywhere.

S: A Upraxifer?

M: Yes.

S: Yeah. Paul Kurtz is, by the way, the founder of both the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and the Secular – the Council for Secular Humanist, and he has a long history of these really obscure terms. The original name for the ''Skeptical Inquirer'' was the ''Zetetic''.

M: Yeah. (laughter)

S: Recently, i was at a meeting with him where we were trying to figure out what to name our medical journal that looks at controversial and pseudoscientific claims, and he had another Greek name that nobody would know what it meant. And i can't even remember what it was. That's how bad it is. But –

M: And that's bad right there.

S: Yeah, fellow geek. It's a challenge.

M:

S: That's our cross to bear—in the skeptical movement, and in humanism, and in philosophical naturalism, and the entire spectrum and everything in between.

M: Yep.

S: Well, Massimo, it was a pleasure. We greatly enjoyed you having on our podcast, the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. You were, in fact, our first guest—our first guest skeptic on the show.

M: I am honored.

S: We appreciate it.

M: I'm honored. It was my pleasure.

S: Thank you. We hope to have you back sometime.

M: Yes, definitely.

B: Thank you, Massimo.

P: Thank you, Massimo.

S: And this is Steven Novella. Until next week, this has been the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

SGU Episode 3

2012-10-31T18:01:34Z

Cornelioid: /* Interview with Massimo Pigliucci (16:22) */ proofreading up to 50:17

{{transcribing all
|transcriber = Cornelioid
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|episodeIcon = File:Massimo-outdoor.jpg
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|downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast06-07-05.mp3
|notesLink = http://www.theskepticsguide.org/archive/podcastinfo.aspx?mid=1&pid=3
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== Introduction ==

S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. Today is June 7th, 2005. This is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me this week are Perry DeAngelis –

P: Hello, everybody.

S: – and Bob Novella.

B: Good-evening.

S: We have a special guest this week, Massimo Pigliucci, who i will introduce in a moment. But, first, some follow-up from our discussion last week.

== News Items ==
=== Smithsonian ID Fiasco Follow-Up (0:00:32) ===
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/01/AR2005060101986.html The Washington Post: Smithsonian Distances Itself From Controversial Film]

S: Last week we talked about what is now being known as the Smithsonian Institution ID Fiasco. For those of you who listened, the Smithsonian Institution agreed to co-sponsor a film, which was being promoted by the [http://www.discovery.org/ Discovery Institute], which is an intelligent design creationism proponent. The film was called –

P: Shocking lack of judgment.

P: Shocking.

S: A shocking lack of judgment and, we agreed, it was extremely naïve.

P: Yep.

B: And, Steve, they're more than just proponents. I mean, they are the major arm –

S: Yes.

B: – of the movement.

S: That's correct. They exist to promote intelligent design creationism. The film was [http://www.privilegedplanet.com/ ''The Privileged Planet: The Search for Design in the Universe''], or ''Purpose in the Universe''. As in response to the Smithsonian Institution's plan there was a backlash of criticism from the scientific and skeptical communities –

P: Shocked.

S: – and, which has happened in many cases, as we have discussed in the past, when school boards or institutions, you know, fall prey to either creationism or intelligent design, or are being used for this purpose, the blogosphere jumps on it, the cyberspace skeptical and scientific community can react almost instantaneously. Mr. Randall Kremer, who was the public affairs agent for the Smithsonian Institute, was flooded with emails. They were essentially embarrassed out of co-sponsoring the film, which is, you know, a minor victory for skeptical activism.

B: I mean, they should have been embarrassed.

S: They should've been embarrassed. Here, i'm going to read to you the email that i personally sent to Mr. Kremer –

B: – which, i think, just put it over the edge.

S: Yes.

B: That was the, you know, the straw that made them cave.

S: Clearly it was instrumental –

P: No doubt. No doubt.

S: – in this victory—which is, i think, probably representative of the kind of scientific backlash that they received. So here's the email:

<blockquote>Mr. Kremer,

As a scientist and educator i was very dismayed to hear that the prestigious Smithsonian Institution was co-sponsoring the screening of a film promoting the pseudoscience of intelligent design, ''The Privileged Planet: The Search for Purpose in the Universe''. I strongly urge you to reconsider this. The Discovery Institute is a pseudoscientific organization dedicated to promoting religious belief as science. Intelligent design is a thinly-veiled religious belief system designed deliberately to remove any overt religious references from what is otherwise classic creationism. Its purpose is to infiltrate institutions like SI in order to convince the public that it has scientific credentials. Do not be so naïve, as unfortunately others before you have, in thinking that screening this film at SI will not be used by the Discovery Institute and other promoters of ID as scientific authoritative endorsement of ID. In fact, they are already doing so. You have stated that SI policy is such that events of a religious or partisan political nature are not permitted. I would add to that list egregious pseudoscience. Even if you accept the propaganda that ID is not a religious belief, you must acknowledge the consensus opinion of the scientific community that it is simply not science. Do not let SI be exploited to promote an anti-scientific agenda.</blockquote>

P: Hear, hear.

S: And, again, feedback like that, you know, very – within days forced, embarrassed the Smithsonian Institutiton –

P: Must've – he must've got thousands of those.

S: Must've gotten thousands. I hope so. I mean, we and the New England Skeptical Society did our part in spreading the word and encouraging people to write similar emails.

P: And the JREF, with their financial offer –

S: Yeah, well, Randi only $20,000 to SI to ''not'' show the film. They did not accept his offer –

P: Right.

S: – and, in fact, they declined to accept the $16,000 from the Discovery Institute. So they're getting no money.

B: Well, i –

S: They're showing the film anyway.

B: Steve, i don't think they actually declined to accept it. I think they gave it back.

S: Well – yes, fine. The returned it.

P: My understanding was they returned it. They returned it, yeah.

S: They returned the 16,000 and they removed their co-sponsorship of the film, so – The film is still being screened, you know, at a private function in the Smithsonian Institute, but it's not being sponsored, they're not accepting any funds from them, and clearly the imprimatur, the validation, of a prestigious scientific institution like the Smithsonian Institute has been removed from this film and from the Discovery Institute.

P: So it's 90% good. It's not 100%, it's 90%.

S: And i think that they'll be more wary the next time.

P: Right.

S: The real victory here is that this will not happen again. Hopefully.

P: What were they thinking?

S: What were they thinking?

P: Yeah. It's crazy. Crazy.

S: Just incredible.

== Science or Fiction (0:05:09) ==

S: We are going to also introduce a new segment this week, a segment called "Science or Fiction". In this segment, i am going to challenge my panel of skeptics. I have three news items—scientific breakthroughs, scientific news items—from the past week. I'm going to read you a brief summary of each of those items. The trick is that one of these items is not real. One of these items is fiction. The other two are genuine scientific breakthroughs, one is fiction. The challenge for you two this week is to try to decide which one is the fake one.

P: Mere child's play.

S: You have to bring all of your skeptical tools to bear to see if you can sniff out the fake. You can make your comments about each one as i present them, but wait until i've stated all three before you make your guess as to which one is fake. Are you ready?

B: Mm-hmm.

P: Sure.

S: Let's play.

B: Go for it.

S: [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7475-dolphins-teach-their-children-to-use-sponges.html Item number one]: Dolphins have been observed not only using tools, but also teaching tool use to their children. This is the first example of cultural tool use in a non-primate species. That's item number one.

P: Interesting.

S: Item number two: Astronomers have discovered an Earth-like planet orbiting a nearby star, 50 light years from Earth. This is the first Earth-sized planet discovered around another star, and astronomers say there are indications that the planet has an atmosphere. This is the best candidate so far for extraterrestrial life.

P: How far?

S: It's about 50 light years from our system.

P: All right.

S: [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050605183843.htm Item number three]: French scientists have discovered a way to keep water from freezing at hundreds of degrees below zero—near absolute zero. Those are your three items. What are your thoughts?

B: Wow. I've got problems with all of them.

S: I know. That's why they were chosen.

P: (laughter)

B: OK, the dolphins. You said one thing at the end, though, that piqued my interest there. You said that it's the first non-primate species shown to use tools?

S: Right. Well, cultural tool use. In other words, they're – it's not something that's just innate. They're actually teaching this to their children.

B: OK. 'Cause when you said that, i thought of – 'cause i know there are birds that will actually use tools to –

S: There are. And there're some birds that have some problem-solving skills.

B: Right.

S: But this is – they're actually –

B: It's cultural. There's actually a cultural thing.

S: They were observed teaching the tool use, yes.

B: OK, now i – i mean, since, of course, they don't have any hands or opposable thumbs, i assume they're not using their flippers. It would have to be their mouth. So maybe somehow they're using their mouth to manipulate an object they find on the sea floor. I don't think that's – i don't think that's a fact.

P: As for me, i'm gonna say that the first one is the truth. I recently, within the last week, saw a special, i think on the Discovery Channel. You know, it showed dolphins being very sophisticated, particularly a thing that they showed that really struck me was how two males would team up for a long time and keep a female hostage between the two of them. They'd swim around with her, never let her get very far from them –

B: I've heard of that.

P: – for months –

B: Months?

P: – months, they would keep her, so that she would only mate with them.

S: They're smart critters. They're vey smart critters.

B: Wow.

P: She'd try to get away, they'd attack her and really keep her corralled.

B: Now –

P: Anyway, it sounds accurate to me, the first one.

B: The second one has got to be false. We simply are not at the –

P: Yeah, it's too far.

B: No, not actually.

P: To see an atmosphere?

B: Fifty light years is not too far. It's the actual size that can't be right. Earth-sized planets we simply don't have the technology yet to ascertain the – to determine or to find planets that are Earth-sized. Typically, the only things we find are bigger than actually Jupiter –

P: Yeah.

B: – so we're talking thousands and thousands of times bigger than the Earth.

P: He went beyond that, too, Bob. He said that they had evidence that there was an atmosphere on it. How the heck –

B: Well, that's possible. I mean, you could – i think –

P: Not that size.

B: Well, using something –

S: All it requires is spectroscopic analysis –

B: Right.

S: – of the light coming from the atmosphere.

B: Spectroscopy would tell you if there were certain elements in the atmosphere. That's not what concerns me. It's the size, and that's just too small. We haven't – we're not close to detecting Earth-sized yet.

P: That one sounds false to me.

B: We will get there, though. We'll get there, but we're not there yet. Now, that – it doesn't matter what technique they're using. They could be using, you know, the gravitational disturbance of the parent star caused by the planet.

P: Wobbling.

B: Still, Earth-sized planets are just too small to create a nudge that's detectable yet.

S: Interesting.

P: Now, the last one, about the water. I mean, it's impressive –

B: Let me make one more comment about the second one. The other technique is actually—and it was recently perfected. They've actually – they claim to have discovered a planet that was the first planet discovered purely from the reflected light of the parent star, which was quite an achievement. But, still, that was a huge planet, a huge amount of light, relatively speaking.

S: So you don't think we're ready for this breakthrough yet.

B: No, not yet. We will definitely get there, and maybe relatively soon. Maybe, you know, maybe ten years, six years, but i've heard nothing approaching Earth-sized yet. And, the third one. Perry, did you want to comment on the water?

P: I was simply saying that it's impressive, but it simply seems more reasonable. Not precisely sure how you'd go about doing it.

S: Even though they were French scientists?

(laughter)

P: Yeah, well, we're suspending our disbelief for the moment.

B: At what temperature did you say, Steve? You mentioned near absolute zero.

P: Hundreds of degrees below zero.

S: Single digits.

B: Single degrees near absolute zero?

S: Yeah. Eight degrees was, i think, the figure given.

P: That's crazy.

B: That's – now that's liquid? Liquid water? I don't – no, i don't see that happening. No.

P: You gotta choose between the two of them.

B: I know. That's just too damn cold. I mean, even, you know, moving water can get colder than 32 by the fact that it's moving, will lower the freezing temperature a little bit, but to that degree? Maybe there's some sort of state that can get water into that makes it somewhat immune to freezing, but i can't imagine what that might be. Let's see. What – how could they – what could they possibly do to liquid water to maintain that state?

P: I have – i don't know.

B: – even that close –

P: Move it at an incredibly high speed?

S: So it's time to cast your votes.

B: OK. By definition –

P: Yeah, i'm still – i still think number two is less reasonable.

S: Perry votes for number two, the Earth-sized planet around another star. Bob?

B: Is what, true? Science or fiction?

S: As the fake one. As the fiction.

P: As the fiction. I'm writing that down as –

B: Now, there's two fiction. Aren't there two fiction?

S: No, there's one fiction. There's two are real.

P: Right. I believe that number two is fiction.

B: I could have sworn you said one real, two fiction.

P: Come on, Bob.

S: Two are science, one is fiction.

P: These rules are not complicated, Bob.

B: OK. Then, well, it's gotta be two. Two is definitely fiction.

S: So you both cast your vote for two.

P: Correct.

B: Too small.

S: OK. Well, you are both good skeptics. You got the correct answer.

P: (''inaudible'') we are!

S: You did very well.

P: Now, how did the scientist do that with the water?

B: I'm dying to know.

S: Well, we'll take them in order. Let's take them in order.

P: We'll take them in order.

S: A group of dolphins living off the coast of Australia teach their offspring to use their snouts with sponges while foraging for food in the sea floor. So, they actually put sponges on their noses to protect their – to protect them while foraging on the sea floor.

B: How do they do this?

S: Then they caught – They stick it on there. And then they caught mothers teaching this to their children.

P: Wow. Wow.

B: That's fascinating. So if they get, like, a –

S: You were right. Your intuition was right. It was something – they use their snout, not their flippers.

P: Smart critters.

B: Absolutely. So, if they get, like, a red sponge and stick it to their nose, they look kind of like clownfish? Is that how it works?

P: Bob.

S: I guess so.

P: Badum-bum.

S: This is by Krützen and colleagues. They analyzed thirteen, what they're calling "spongers", and 172 non-spongers, and concluded that the practice seems to be passed along family lines, primarily from mothers to daughters, for some reason.

B: That's very believable. I mean, they're just so intelligent. It seems –

P: Women do most of the work in the animal kingdom. That's why.

B: It seems very likely that they improvised some sort of tool use with their snouts. OK. Makes sense.

S: You're absolutely right with number two. I think that that is eventually going to be a headline –

P: Right.

S: – but it's just a few years too early.

B: Mm-hmm.

S: But Bob is just too up-to-date on the planet-hunting state of the art.

P: Hey, hey! I guessed it, too.

S: You did! But Bob had the details. It's true. You both sniffed that one out.

P: Thank you.

B: Water me! Come on, tell me, what's the (''inaudible'') do this?

S: OK. Here's the headline. You're gonna love it. "Nanotube water doesn't freeze, even at hundreds of degrees below zero."

B: Wow.

S: So, what French scientists have done is, they've – they are using the carbon nanotubes as a template, and the water molecules filling these tubes take on a similar structure, where the hydrogen and oxygen atoms form a lattice-like bond, and they – it will not freeze. It will continue to flow through this tube, even down to near-absolute temperatures.

B: That's fascinating.

P: Hum.

B: My god. It changes the molecular arrangement of the water?

S: Yeah, it actually changes the molecular arrangement of the water.

B: But can you still consider it liquid water, though?

S: You know, it's – that's a good question. I didn't say it remained a liquid. I said it didn't freeze.

B: A-ha! OK.

P: It's true.

S: It may actually be another state of water.

B: That makes more sense.

S: It may not technically be the same state as, you know, normal liquid water.

P: Sort of plasmic?

S: It's not a plasma.

B: No.

S: I mean, it's a new – and i don't know if they're actually going to call it a new ''phase'', but it definitely is a new ''state'' that water is in. And it is more like liquid than like ice. It certainly does not form ice crystals. It stays in this lattice formation and does not, you know, freeze into the normal crystalline structure that water ice has.

B: Yeah. It definitely doesn't sound like any of the other states of matter could account for that. I mean, you couldn't – it doesn't sound liquid to me, it doesn't sound – maybe it's a different type of solid. It's definitely not the other types, like plasma that Perry mentioned, or some of the more exotic ones, the Bose–Einstein condensates and the fermionic condensates. It can't be that, either. So, maybe it's a new type of solid for water. OK.

P: Interesting as heck.

S: Very interesting. It remains to be seen what the applications of this would be, but these nanotubes technology is, you know, very, very new and very, very active area of research, and this is just one example.

B: The applications are – appear to be just utterly mind-boggling for these nanotubes. I've never seen a discovery take off in quite the way that nanotubes has. I mean, just from the get-go, you know, the interest was worldwide, and since then they've found potential applications from computing to fibers to, maybe—to all sorts of applications—electronics. It's amazing how versatile this material appears to be. I think we'll be hearing a lot about nanotubes.

S: Very interesting. Well, it is now time to bring on our guest.

== Interview with Massimo Pigliucci (16:22) ==
[http://rationallyspeaking.org/ Dr. Pigliucci’s website]

S: With us this week is Dr. Massimo Pigliucci, who we simply call our friend (booming voice) Massimo.

P: (laughs)

S: Massimo is Associate Professor of Evolutionary Biology at SUNY Stony Brook in Long Island. He has published over 70 technical papers in evolution and botany. He's written seven books. His most recent non-technical book is ''Denying Evolution''. He's the author of a column in ''Skeptical Inquirer'' magazine called "Thinking About Science", and he's a frequent contributor not only to ''Skeptical Inquirer'' but also ''Skeptic'', ''Free Inquiry'', ''Philosophy Now'', and ''Philosopher's Magazine''. He has a doctorate in genetics from the University of Ferrarra in Italy, a PhD in botany from the University of Connecticut, and a PhD in philosophy from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, Massimo.

M: Thank you for having me. That list always sounds a little bit embarrassing.

(laughter)

S: Yeah, it always is embarrassing to hear somebody else read your own CV.

B: I wish i had such a list.

P: It's daunting, yes.

S: Thank you for being on our show this week. We appreciate it.

M: My pleasure.

S: So, i'm sure you've been following, in the news over the last few weeks, the recent activity of the – our friends, the intelligent design crew –

M: Yes, indeed.

S: – in Kansas City with the – We just got through talking about the Smithsonian Institute debacle –

M: Right.

S: – which, if you hadn't heard, they backed off from cosponsoring the Discovery Institute film.

M: Right. See, sometimes it works.

S: Sometimes it does work. Sometimes it does work.

P: Amen.

S: And, hopefully, people, you know, like the director of the Smithsonian, will think twice before, you know, falling for the Discovery Institute's coy offers in the future. So, what have you been doing recently, in terms of investigating or writing about the intelligent design crew?

M: Well, one thing that i've ''not'' been doing is to go to Kansas for those [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_evolution_hearings scam hearings that they organized with the local Board of Education].

S: Were you invited?

M: Yes, i was actually invited, and i followed the advice of Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education, more or less politely responding that i was – it wouldn't be a good idea for any scientists to participate.

P: So, Massimo, you agree with the basic, what i've been reading, then, in that the scientific community is really refraining from speaking at those hearings? You agree with that?

M: Right. I agree, and that's actually a change of heart for me, because in the past i've been involved in direct debates with creationists, intelligent design proponents, and so on and so forth. Now, under certain circumstances, those debates are actually fun, i guess, and may have a purpose, depending on the venue and the format and so on. But, definitely, in front of a school board, it's not – it doesn't seem like a good idea, because it really, in that case, does provide the other side with some legitimacy that they, frankly, don't deserve.

S: But do you – critics have said – critics of the decision of Eugenie Scott, and you, obviously, and of scientists that she advised, to boycott those hearings, have said that they already have legitimacy by the mere fact that they're before a school board, and then, therefore, shouldn't the mainstream scientific position be represented? What do you say about that?

M: Well, it depends on – i think, when we're talking about legitimacy, it depends on who bestows the legitimacy. It seems to me that one thing is to be invited by a school board, who as we know, is elected, and doesn't necessarily have much of an effect on either science, or education for that matter. Another thing is to be, on the other hand, given some credence from a professional biologist or a professional scientist, and that's what, i guess, we wanted to avoid in this case. Incidentally, the message was, in no uncertain terms, directed mostly to the school board. In other words, we told them that this was not an acceptable way of deciding these sort of matters.

S: Do you think that strategy worked?

M: I think it worked better than the alternative in this particular case. We'll see, of course, what the final outcome of the Kansas equation is.

P: Right.

M: Apparently, in Kansas, there is never a final outcome.

S: Right.

M: They can change their mind every other year.

P: It's true.

S: We thought it was interesting, the other – the unique or new aspect of this case was that the school board's decision, what they've said so far—now, they haven't rendered a final decision—went beyond just the creation–evolution issue to actually redefining science.

M: Which is, of course – right. Which is, of course, what the intelligent design side actually wants. Beginning with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_E._Johnson Phillip Johnson]'s early books, and certainly now with their chief intellectual [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A._Dembski Bill Dembski], what they want is, in fact, to redefine science. And that's an interesting point, which, i guess, we should spend a couple of minutes on. I have often said –i've debated Bill Dembski a couple of times, and we have exchanged opinions in writings as well, and here is Dembski's position, which sounds very reasonable, and i think it's one of the reasons it's so appealing to, sort of, people who don't have much of a philosophical background, even some scientists. His position is the following: He says, look, it used to be that anything – different kinds of potential causes for events were allowed as possible explanations, since the time of Aristotle—Aristotle included final causes, of course, to which intelligent design will belong—as acceptable kind of answers when one wonders about what's going on in the universe. And, then, Dembski says, Bacon came on—the British philosopher—came on the scene in the sixteenth century and decided, more or less arbitrarily, that final causes were out, that science was only a matter of ''how'' and not of ''why'', and, ever since, according to Dembski, science has been impoverished, and it's time to bring things back, essentially, to the wholeness of the Aristotelian approach. Now, that sounds very interesting, except that there are a couple of things that don't work. First of all, Aristotle never used final causes in a way that Bill Dembski will like to begin with.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: But that's a minor point. The major point is this: There was a very good reason why Bacon did – suggested what he suggested, which was, you realize that science wasn't going to get off the ground while it was still messing around with supernatural explanations. If one always had the supernatural card to play, any time that one was sort of running out of options, then science would simply never really be able to make progress in understanding the natural world.

S: Right.

M: So, that's why he said that those kinds of answers are out. Now, that worked very well for about a couple of centuries, especially in physics—Galileo, Newton, and so on. Then, Darwin came to play, and the game changed again, because, in fact, Darwin did contribute what—Dembski maintains—Darwin did reintroduce final causes in science, in biology. The question of why things happen is a fundamental question in evolutionary biology, and it is a perfectly fair question, which is pursued by biologists since Darwin. It's just that we answer in a different way. When we ask, "Why is the eye structured the way it is?", the answer is "Because natural selection favored certain variations on that structure, which worked better for the purpose of visualizing objects, and so on and so forth. In other words, there is a role for "why" questions in biology. It's just that the answer is grammatically different from the one that intelligent design proponents would want to see in – consider as questions in science.

S: Right. "Why" questions are essentially mechanism. "What is the mechanism of this phenomenon?"

M: The long-term mechanisms. So, the distinction here in biology is particularly clear, between "how" questions and "why" questions. So, i can ask those questions, for example, again, about the eye, and if i ask "How does it work?", then what i mean is, "What are the molecular, et cetera, mechanisms that allow the image to be – you know, the light to be captured, the image to be formed and to be sent to the brain, and so on and so forth?" But if i ask, "Why is the eye there to begin with?", then the answer is—regardless of specific mechanisms—the answer is, "Because there is an advantage for certain living organisms to be able to see what – you know, to perceive and understand their surroundings in terms of light waves.

S: Right. So, evolution is the ultimate "why" answer in – for biology, for biological "why" questions.

M: That's right.

S: Dembski and his crowd would like to reintroduce—essentially take us back before Darwin, before Galileo, before Bacon, even—and to reintroduce supernatural or divine causes into scientific questions. What they say is that by not allowing them we're essentially rigging the game against those types of answers.

M: Right.

S: What's your response to that?

M: Well, my response is that – suppose—i actually asked this question to Dembski at one point, at a meeting at the New York Academy of Sciences a couple of years ago—and the question is, OK, well, suppose, for a moment, that, in fact, we do allow intelligent design, in the sense that Dembski means, back into science. So suppose that i'm going to be, all of a sudden, the director of the National Science Foundation, and i decide to give, you know, three million dollars, over a period of five years, to Dembski—which is a pretty good grant by NSF standards—and i ask him, "What would you do? What sort of experiments would you set up? What sort of empirical hypotheses would you be able to test?" And he had no answer.

P: It's a good question.

M: Yeah! He had no answer.

S: Of course he has no answer. Yeah.

M: So, that is why, i think – so, i guess, to go back to your question, there are two different kinds of answers to "Why is it that the supernatural is out by definition?", essentially. One is the pragmatic one, the one that i just provided. You know, from the point of view of practical scientists, i want to see, you know, the proof is in the pudding. What is he going to do? Suppose that i do give you the money. What sort of hypotheses can you test? And, of course, the answer, again, is "None.", because, by definition, of course, the supernatural agent can do whatever the heck he wants –

S: Right.

M: – and, so, there's no way to predict, and therefore to test, what he's going to do. The other answer is, i think, a little deeper, and that's the philosophical answer—and, as you know, most scientists are not particularly well-versed in philosophy—but the philosophical answer is this: It is a matter of principle, once that you invoke the supernatural, you will not be able to propose empirically testable hypotheses. In other words, it's not just a matter of Bill Dembski's limited imagination, or anybody else's limited imagination, that at the moment we can't think of one, but give me enough time and i'll come up with one. A philosopher would argue that, as a matter of principle, if you abandon the position of methodological naturalism in science, you're dead. You're not doing science anymore. You're maybe doing something else—you might be doing theology, you might be doing some sort of philosophy—but you're certainly not doing science. And it is that difference, of course, between philosophical and methodological naturalism, that is very important, is apparently a little subtle for most people –

S: Right.

M: – but it's very important in terms of this debate.

S: Right, and they either don't get it or don't want to get it.

M: Right. (laughs) I do have the suspicion sometimes that they don't want to get it.

S: They don't want to get it. Because, you know, how many times can you explain it to them –

M: Right.

S: – and to really not understand it, you know, stretches the imagination.

M: Right. I mean, i can see how some people with no background in either science or philosophy might be a little puzzled by this difference, which, by the way, we should probably explain, but somebody like Bill Dembski, who does, actually, in fact, have a degree in philosophy, it's hard to believe that he doesn't understand the implications of that distinction.

S: Right, and i've had the same experience as you. If you remember, we were together at the [http://business.highbeam.com/5799/article-1G1-91236216/fourth-world-skeptics-conference-burbank-lively-foment World Skeptics Conference] a couple of years ago –

M: Yeah.

S: – and i had the opportunity to ask, i think it was Nelson –

M: Mm-hmm.

S: – a similar kind of question –

M: Yeah, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Nelson_(creationist) Paul Nelson].

S: – and what he said was that, you know, you cannot question the mind of god. If i say – which means, as you just said, any hypothesis about intelligent design—about the intelligent designer—that you could seek to test or falsify is rendered unfalsifiable by that statement –

M: Right.

S: – because you can't ask the question, "What would, or what should, the world look like if it were designed by an intelligent designer?", because there's no answer to that question. The answer is, "It looks like whatever it looks like." –

M: Right.

S: – and, therefore, it's not falsifiable, and, therefore, not science.

M: Correct. There is –

B: But couldn't –

S: You know they have to understand that.

M: Right. There is a caveat there—which, of course, is something that Dembski either as a matter of – either on purpose or because he really doesn't see the difference, he insists on this point—he says, "But, look: There's plenty of good science that is done under the assumption of intelligent design." He talks about forensic science, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and so on and so forth. And, of course, he's right: That kind of science—archeology, for example—''is'' done under the presumption of intelligent design. But, in those cases, you can, in fact, question the mind of the designer.

S: Right.

M: In fact, the whole point is that you do know, or at least make hypotheses about –

B: Excellent.

M: – what the designer is doing and why –

S: Right.

M: If you couldn't do that, then there would be no archeology, no SETI –

S: Right,

M: – and no forensic science.

S: Exactly.

P: Exactly.

B: That's a good point.

M: And, so, ''intelligent design'' is a little too broad of a term in –

S: So it's a false analogy on their part.

M: That's right. Exactly. It is.

S: I've always – it's always struck me, too, that it's one enormous logical fallacy. Now, we keep track of logical fallacies on the show. We actually have our [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/resources/logicalfallacies.aspx top 20 list of logical fallacies] –

M: (laugter)

S: – which you can read on our website. It's at [http://www.theness.com/ theness.com]. There's a couple that they're using here. One, of course, is the argument from ignorance: "We don't know something, therefore god did it."

M: Right.

S: And we – specifically, in this type of explanation, you can also call that the "god of the gaps" argument.

M: Right.

S: But it's also confusing ''currently unexplained'' with ''unexplainable''. Again, that's sort of, "The current gap of knowledge, that's what god did."

M: Right.

S: And, as that gap retreats, and the ever-advancing, you know, knowledge of science, god still fills whatever gaps and crevices are currently unexplained as if they never will be explained –

M: Right.

S: – even though, tomorrow, they ''are'' explained.

M: I would make, also, an even third-level distinction. That is, there are two kinds of unexplainable questions or phenomena.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: There is the impossibility to explain something because, in fact, there is, essentially, no explanation within the realm of natural laws—which is the sort of unexplainable phenomenon that Dembski likes—but there is also what philosophers call ''epistemic unexplainability''. There may be some things out there that are explainable in the sense that there ''is'' an answer somewhere, but, because of the limitations, both current and for possibly future human understanding and human reason, we might never be able to get the answer.

S: Right.

M: So, one possible –

B: It's like a dog –

M: Yes.

B: It's like a dog trying to understand calculus.

M: That's right. Exactly.

B: It's never going to happen.

M: And there are some interesting possible examples within science. So, for example, the question of the origin of life ''may'' fall into that category—not because the origin of life is unexplainable in principle—i don't think it is—and, of course, we ''may'' explain it. I mean, you know, next week, we may see an article in ''Science'' or ''Nature'', somebody has actually come up with the right answer. But it may also be the sort of thing that is epistemically unexplainable by human beings simply because there's very, if any, clues left, essentially. You know, something that happened four billion years ago. There are no fossils. We have very little understanding, or way to get decent information, about what the conditions actually were. So we might never be able to answer that question. But that—even that, even granting that—it still doesn't bring you any closer to the necessity of a supernatural explanation.

S: Right, right. Once again, we are speaking to Massimo Pigliucci, philosopher and evolutionary scientist, and author of many articles and books. We've been talking about the intelligent design phenomenon and proponents of intelligent design, which brings us, really, to the philosophical underpinnings of science itself—What is the difference between science and religion, philosophically?—and we've brought up some terms like "philosophical naturalism"—our organization, for example, advocates what i would call "scientific skepticism"—and there are some subtle differences between these types of philosophies. You've written several reviews and articles, for example, criticizing [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould Stephen Jay Gould]'s summary, or summation –

M: Right.

S: – of the relationship between science and religion.

M: Right.

S: Gould came up with this idea of "non-overlapping magesteria", in which both science and religion occupy different –

B: Domains of knowledge.

S: – intellectual domains—right, different domains of knowledge he calls "magesteria"—and they each serve their purpose. You're very – you have been very critical of this idea.

M: Well, for plenty of reasons. I mean, there's not – i should probably start out by saying that i am not a Gould-hater like some of my colleagues. I really like some of the stuff that Stephen Gould wrote, both technical and non-technical, and i really dislike some of the other stuff. In particular, about religion, there are a couple of things that really, i think, are worth considering in that context. First of all, Gould did not come up with the basic idea that you mention, although he did come up with the fancy name, but that idea goes back, essentially, all the way to St. Augustine.

S: Yes, and he acknowledges that, to be fair, yeah.

M: Right. Now, the basic idea, however, is, i think, a bit misleading, for two reasons: Number one, because it hinges on the definition of "god", which Gould leaves kind of up in the air for most of that book. At one point, he finally has to come to terms with the fact that, well, in fact, there are some conceptions of god that do go head-on against science. For example, if you are a Young Earth Creationist who believes that there was a worldwide flood four thousand years old – ago, then, i'm sorry, science just tells you you're wrong. And, if your belief in god hinges on that particular belief then you're dead in the water. So even Gould had to acknowledge that it really depends on what you mean by "god" and what particular version of "god" you're espousing, which is, of course, very different from the question of science. There are no different varieties of science that we're talking about here. It's either you're – you know, scientists disagree on specific theories, but there is, essentially, one body of methods and knowledge that we call "science". On the other hand, religion is an incredibly heterogeneous body of beliefs. So, one has to, at least, to be clear on what one means, because it sounds very nice, it sounds very ecumenical, to say, "Well, science and religion can be different areas of expertise, and let's just keep them separate." Well, it depends. But even within the kind of religion that does not have any direct conflict with science—So, suppose you're, you know, a progressive Catholic. You know, the Pope. The previous Pope, John Paul II, as we know, did acknowledge that the Catholic Church does not have much of a problem—have a problem at all—with the modern theory of – biological theory of evolution.

S: Right.

M: OK. Well, that sounds very good. That still does not amount to say that there's no overlap at all between the two areas of intellectual endeavor. For one thing, because part of science is now getting, actually, to the point of providing explanations, at least tentative explanations, for where religious beliefs and morality come from to begin with.

P: Mm-hmm.

M: Now, i'm not a particular defender of evolutionary psychology, either, but the ideas are out there. And the fact that the ideas are out there means that science is, in fact, beginning to encroach in the area – on the area of morality, and religious beliefs, and so on and so forth. Should we kick it out, just because we feel uncomfortable about it, or because some people feel uncomfortable about it? I don't think so. That's not to say that current ideas about evolution are more likely or necessarily correct, but it's just that it is worth exploring as a possibility.

S: Right.

M: And, lastly, there – the last thing that really, i guess, prompted my disagreement with Gould, is that he seems to somehow have forgotten that there is a whole different area of human knowledge, or human intellectual endeavor, that greatly overlaps, and often contradicts, some religious positions, and that's, of course, philosophy—particularly moral philosophy. So, to say, as he says in that book, that morality is the province of religion—well, wait a minute. Actually, morality is the province of a lot of different kinds of activities—as i said a minute ago, even possibly science—but certainly not ''only'' religion. So, in other words, the situation, it seems to me, is a lot more complicated than the nice and, you know, neat distinction that Gould was trying to make.

S: Yeah, i agree. He did see – he did go out of his way to sort of overstate the historical non-overlapping of science and religion, and it struck me that you have to sort of, you know, turn a blind eye to all of the cases of – you know, religion, essentially, completely dominated science, was ''the'' explanation for the natural world, and has had to retreat territory, if you will, to scientific explanations and the institution of science. But, do you think you could, you know, rescue a legitimate point from Gould's position by saying that what he's describing is not the historical relationship between science and religion but what the relationship should be—in other words, that religion ''should'' avoid overlapping with science and ''should'' restrict itself to the domains of morality and to the great unanswerable questions of existence that are inherently not explainable or not explorable by scientific methods? What would you say to that?

M: I think that is a fair point. However, the question then can also be asked the other way around: Should science be restricted from inquiries into morality and religious beliefs and so on?

S: Well, you could – as we were saying with the intelligent design thing, there are some questions that are simply outside the realm of science –

M: Right.

S: – and you can argue that, well, if, once you're outside the realm of science by, you know, methodological naturalism, then, you know, that is the domain of faith. You're free to have any arbitrary belief or faith that you choose, because these are questions that are inherently outside of the scientific realm. For example, you may – some people believe that the question of whether or not god exists—or any power or entity or ''thing'' that is outside of the natural laws of the universe, not bound by nature, if you will—that that's an inherently unanswerable question by science and therefore is in the realm of faith.

M: Right.

S: Would you agree with that non-overlapping aspect?

M: Right. Yes, i would agree with that nonoverlapping – i'm afraid, however, that that would leave very little outside, in fact, of the realm of science, and i'm perfectly happy – if people are happy with that conclusion –

S: Yes.

M: – i'm fine to go along with it. But the kind of questions—the kind of encroaching of science into the territory of religion and morality that i was referring to—does not deal directly with the question of the existence of god—which, you're right, it's by definition outside the realm of science. But there are other things that are close enough to really bother a lot of religious believers that science is now beginning to encroach upon.

S: Right.

M: So, suppose that we do come up, eventually, with a very reasonable, very serious theory of how morality—a sense of morality, at least, and even possibly some certain specific moral rules—evolved by natural selection among primates and (''inaudible'') you know, groups or societies.

S: Right.

M: Well, you know, is that encroaching on religion, or not?

S: Well, this is what i would say to this—and this is – i've certainly heard humanists and others take this approach—that science deals with statements of fact—what is the state of history, the state of nature—whereas morality deals with statements of value. So, whenever you have to make a value judgment, that is a question that can be informed—factually informed—by science, but cannot be made scientifically.

M: Mm-hmm.

S: So, that is a very practical and real place to draw the line—again, to map out these domains.

M: Right. So, what you're referring to is what, in philosophy, is known as the naturalistic fallacy, which was discussed originally by David Hume. The idea was, in fact, that you cannot go from what ''is'' to what ''ought to be'' –

S: Right.

M: – from a matter of fact to a matter of value. OK. Now, i have actually taken that position myself in the past and, quite frankly, at this moment i keep vesseling back and forth.

S: Right.

M: So, don't necessarily hold me to what i'm about to say in a few months, because i may change my mind again. But, there is some interesting situations here that need to be discussed. So, while i will certainly grant that there are – there is a large area of specific moral decisions that are very far from anything that science can say at the moment, there are some particular moral values—particular moral rules—that seem to be, in fact, fairly straightforwardly explainable by science. For example, there is a whole area now in philosophy of ethics and philosophy of morality that looks at the use of optimality models—game theoretical models—to predict what sort of behavior would be optimal in a group of individuals, given certain constraints. This is a sort of mathematical modeling that has been done in evolutionary biology for a long time, but until recently, it has not been applied, in fact, directly to questions of human morality. Well, it turns out that when people have—in the last three or four years, there've been a series of papers in major science magazines—when people have, in fact, applied that kind of game-theoretical approach to realistic situations and have actually tested their predictions, with actual real human beings, the funny thing that turned out is that the models were able to predict, very closely, what real human beings would consider – how they would act and what they would consider moral or nonmoral. That raises the question that some kinds of human behavior—human morality, such as our attitude toward killing people, or our attitude toward cheating, and so on and so forth—those actually may be a matter of fact, meaning that they are the expected outcome of the evolution of a society of a certain kind of (''inaudible''), certain kinds of animals, capable of thinking in fairly abstract manners and so on and so forth. If that is the case, seems to me that that approach begins to break down—it may not entirely break down, but it begins to at least blur the line—between factual and value judgments, because now the value judgment is predictable and explainable in terms of facts about nature.

S: Yeah, i agree that there are certain things that we, as human beings, value, and the evolutionary psychologists are certainly engaged in an attempt to explain why we make those value judgments—again, the evolutionary "why" –

M: Right.

S: – What was the advantage for us having these value judgments?—so – but i'm not sure i agree that having a causal evolutionary "why" to those values makes them not values. Again, i said that would – for me, that's science ''informing'' the value judgment. But we still place a value on life, we place a value on ''human'' life, and then we get to – there is some point where you have to make a judgment call. For example, how much relative value should we place upon animal life versus human life?

M: Right.

S: How much relative value should we place upon the life of an embryo versus the life of a mother?

M: Now, i think you're – i think you're right.

S: Science can inform these questions, but it ultimately comes down to a value judgment –

M: Right.

S: – that is outside the realm of pure empiricism.

M: I think you're right, but the way that, therefore, i would see it is not as clear a line of separation between facts on one hand and values on the other. I would see some values as actually explainable entirely, or in large part, as the result of facts of nature—for example, again, the kind of society – the kind of animal that we are, actually. Other values, are, on the other hand – may be informed by facts discovered by science but not entirely explained by it, and then there may be—but probably there very likely are—certain areas of moral judgment, such as, probably, the one you just touched upon, that is, how do we treat other animals—that are, in fact, essentially entirely outside the explanations of evolutionary biology.

S: Right.

M: That, to me, brings up an interesting model, however, of sort of a continuum between fact and value, rather than a sharp distinction.

S: I agree, which is true in so much of, you know, intellectual distinctions.

M: Right.

S: It's a fuzzy continuum, not a sharp demarcation. But that doesn't mean—and that's actually another logical fallacy –

M: Right.

S: – the false continuum—that doesn't mean that there isn't a distinction to be made at the extremes –

M: Right.

S: – that there aren't certain questions that are pretty purely factual and other questions that are pretty purely, you know, value judgments or moral, if you want to use that term.

M: Yes, i think you're right. But the question that concerns us as skeptics and scientists and so on is, well, how many people are going to be happy with this idea of a continuum? Now, it may be that a lot of people are simply going to be very unhappy with the idea that there is any continuity at all –

S: Right.

M: – and, you know, how do we....?

S: You know, i agree, but i think that this is such a critical, core intellectual concept that i don't think you can water it down.

M: Right.

S: I think we just have to, through education, get people to think in a little bit more complex way, and to appreciate the concept of continuum, because i just can't imagine dispensing with it or trying to teach concepts with a false dichotomy –

M: Right.

S: – without giving people the appreciation for how to think about continuum with, you know, pseudoscience on one end and science at the other end, and with a continuum in between, for example. And, again, pretty much anything you can – any distinction you can think to make is really probably a continuum and not a sharp demarcation.

M: Right. Right.

S: So, i agree with you that that's a very common fallacy that people fall into, and i think we just need to force our way through with education, to make these kinds of decisions.

M: Which brings us to the question of what kind of an education? And, as you know, there have been – there's been a lot of talk about, we need more science education and we need more scientific education will help solving these kind of problems. And, over the years, i've become convinced that, actually, we don't need more science education—at least not the kind of science education we're doing at the moment.

S: Right, we need better standards of care.

B: Critical thinking skills.

M: Or different. I think we need quite a different kind of science education, because, still today, a lot of our science education is—especially in disciplines such as biology, much less so in areas such as physics—but biology is, to a large extent, you know, a factual – applied in a factual manner.

S: Right.

M: So, you know, really, an introductory course in biology, it's almost as charming as the yellow pages. I mean, you just, you know, start with A and end with Z. And there is very little that we do to actually train our students and our children toward the real objective to education, which i think is critical thinking abilities.

B: Yeah.

M: Now, it is true, of course, that you cannot think on an empty mind, so (''inaudible'') critical thinking about something, you actually do have to know ''some'' of the facts.

S: Right.

M: But i really don't believe the model that the facts – that the critical thinking is simply going to be the result of seepage through an ocean of facts. I don't think we need the ocean of facts.

S: No, yeah, i agree. Clearly, the critical thinking—theory, understanding, and logic—does not flow naturally from just memorizing a bunch of facts.

M: Right.

S: There are certainly people that know lots of facts but have no real understanding—like, oh, Creationists, for example –

M: Right.

S: – or anyone that we would think of as a crank, you know. We know these people. They have all this factual knowledge, but they just don't get it.

M: Right.

S: At the same time, empty theories—you know, you tend to drift off into La La Land if you don't have some actual empirical facts to anchor you to reality. So, it's an interaction. It's an intimate interaction between the two, theory and fact working together hand-in-hand. That's – that is what we need to teach kids, and that's why Intelligent Design and Creationism is – would be such a critical blow—and ''has'' been, in fact, a critical blow—to the quality of our science education, 'cause it really undercuts that relationship.

M: Right. Yes, you cannot – it's hard to exercise critical thinking when one of the possibilities on the table is that a supernatural being just did it. "And, why did he do it?" "Well, because he felt like it."

S: Right.

M: "And, how did he do it?" "Well, who knows? He's supernatural."

S: Right.

M: Well, there's not much you can go on from that kind of premise, obviously.

S: You mention that you weren't a big fan of evolutionary psychology, which is basically the discipline of trying to explain human motivations and beliefs and morality in evolutionary terms. What's your beef with that?

M: Well, the idea, i think, is sound—meaning that – you know, the basic idea is that, look, human beings are, of course, one kind of animal, and, as all other animals on Earth, we have an evolutionary history. We evolved by natural selection, among other mechanisms, over a long period of time, and so it's only logical to think that natural selection did not shape just our physical bodies, it also shaped some of—at least, in part—our mental abilities.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: We know that natural selection can shape and change the behavior of a lot of animals, so why not humans?

S: Right.

M: So, the basic premise, i think, is fundamentally sound. The problem is this: Since, of course, as we know, behavior, especially human interest in behaviors, don't fossilize. They don't leave much of a fossil record.

S: Right.

M: Since we don't have – and the solution is made worse by the fact that there are no close relatives—genetically speaking, evolutionarily speaking—to human beings alive today. Our closest relatives are chimpanzees and bonobos, which have diverged from us several million years ago. That's not even close by any standard of so-called phylogenetic comparative analysis. So we don't have – of course, there ''were'' other species of humans, but they all, for one reason or another, died off some time ago.

S: Well, let me just pause there for a minute, though. Have – did you read Carl Sagan's book ''Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors''?

M: Yes, mm-hmm.

S: So, i mean, actually, his line of argument in that book was, looking at the behavior of chimps and primates to see if we can infer anything about human psychological evolutionary ancestors.

M: Right.

S: So, you're not saying that we can't get ''any'' value from looking at chimps and our closest relatives?

M: No. No, i'm not saying that we can't get any value, but i'm saying that we can get very little value, for the following reason, and with all due respect to Carl Sagan, but – the reason is this: At best, we have a phylogenetic group—you know, close relatives—of three or four species. Right? You know, if you count the two species of chimpanzees and one gorilla. And that's simply not enough for any serious comparative phylogenetic analysis. Comparative phylogenetics is – has been a booming discipline in evolutionary biology for the last twenty years, but all the best studies that have been done in comparative phylogenetic studies usually include a large number of species that are fairly closely related to each other—meaning, at a minimum, twenty or thirty. The reason for that is because then you can apply statistical techniques that have been, you know, developed over the last several years.

S: Right.

M: The problem, therefore, with the case of humans is not that it's impossible in – as a matter of principle, or that these are particularly insane ideas. It just happens that we're pretty unlucky in terms of number of comparisons we can make.

S: Right.

M: Now, that said, of course, yes, one can look at the behavior of chimpanzees or bonobos—which, by the way, are very different from each other and equally ... to us—but, and, of course, get some clues or some interesting ideas, some interesting suggestions, about how certain human behaviors, certain human traits have evolved. So, if, in fact, we were doing – if evolutionary psychology were a branch of philosophy, ''informed'' by science—that is, it's a way to build plausible stories about the origin of certain human traits, and you know what? We cannot really test them rigorously, but these are plausible—then i'm perfectly happy with them. In fact, that's exactly what i said a few minutes ago in this broadcast when i was talking about possible ideas about the evolution of morality, and so on and so forth.

S: Right.

M: But, the problem comes to me because when evolutionary psychologists really make a hard pitch for the idea that theirs is, in fact, a quantifiable science of empirically testable hypotheses, largely, though not entirely, it's not. And it's not, not because of their fault, but because of the reality of the situation. We only have a few species to compare, not enough to carry out statistical tests, and we have otherwise very little information about what human environments were like—especially social environments were like—during the Pleistocine. We have next to nothing in terms of knowledge of what humans actually did, behaved, or thought at the time.

S: Right.

M: And so, you know, to me, evolutionary psychology, at the moment—and i don't see how this is going to change any time soon—is an interesting way of thinking about how certain human traits may have come about, but it is really not a science in any satisfactory sense of the term.

S: Now, there's one other method that you didn't comment on, that might be more plausible for evolutionary psychology, and that is looking at the phenotypic expression, if you will, throughout currently existing human populations. So, although we only have one species, we do have a number of races, we have a number of isolated cultures. And what evolutionary psychologists do is look for those psychological traits which seem to be universal among humans despite vast disparities in culture, and that is one other window onto evolutionary psychology. What do you think about that?

M: Yeah, again, that is a really reasonable approach, and a reasonable approach that was used by evolutionary biologists in – when they study other species. In some sense, however, it suffers from the opposite problem from the one we were just talking about. So, if we're talking about long-term evolution, as we said a minute ago, we're missing a sufficient number of comparisons. If we're talking about very, very short-term evolution—so we're talking about evolution within ''homo sapiens''—perhaps we can actually understand something about differences between existing populations of humans, but when it comes down to how those universals that you were talking about actually get involved—you know, were they the result of natural selection, or of other evolutionary processes—there are evolutionary processes that are not selective in nature, so, for example, you know, random ??? is the result of simply fixing certain genes in certain small populations—we know that human beings—we know from molecular data—that the human population at certain times in its history was, in fact, small enough to cause that sort of random drift of characteristics—so, for any particular camp that we see today, we're not going to be in a position to know if it was the result of natural selection—as, of course, evolutionary psychologists will maintain—or the result of, essentially, historical accidents. And that is, by the way, the one-million-dollar question in evolutionary biology, you know, how do you discriminate between selective histories and random accidents.

S: Right.

M: The way, usually, again, biologists do it is one day either have a very big level of information in the fossil record, or one day have a lot of closely related species. I can tell you one example: Look, this may be a little – the example itself is a little technical, but it's, i think, very illuminating about the sort of things that we would like to be able to do in evolutionary psychology, and that, i think, at the moment, at least, we can't do. One of the best examples published in the last few years of competitive phylogenetic studies in non-human animals was the – a study that dealt with the question of why certain fish have – the male fish have a long tail, which seems to be attractive to females. So, these are swordtail fish, which you can buy for your aquarium. And, it has been known for a long time that females have a preference for males that have a long tail. Well, the question was this: Did the preference evolve first, or did the tail evolve first? And how are you going to answer that sort of question? You cannot answer it by looking at variation within the current species, because you will find males with longer or shorter tails, and you will find females with more or less preference for long tails, but you won't be able—since they're all mixed around—you can't pick out which one came first.

S: Right.

M: The way they solve this problem was an extremely elegant piece of work. They looked at – these researchers looked at the fifteen or twenty most closely-related species to the swordtail fish. Some of these species have the tail—the very close relatives—and some of them don't. The males don't have the tail. So, if you trace back the evolution of the tail, you will find that, at one point, you know, a certain number of million years ago, there were fish that were closely related to the swordtail which did not have the tail. Turns out, however, that their females have the preference. So, if you expose the female, some close relatives without the tail, to a male that has an artificial tail, they'll go for it. That is a very strong indication that, in fact, the female preference evolved before the tail –

S: Before the tail.

M: Right. And the tail evolved as a result of the fact that, for whatever reason—which we don't know at the moment—some females did have that preference. Now, that's a beautiful example of how you can figure out, in fact, how natural selection can favor certain not only morphological traits, such as the tail, but certain – but interacts with behavioral traits, such as female preference. That's exactly the sort of stuff that evolutionary biologists would ''die'' to have in human species.

S: Right.

M: And, the problem, again, is that, unfortunately, we don't have twenty or twenty-five species to play with.

S: Right. One more attempt to rescue evolutionary psychology.

M: (laughter) OK!

S: One more attempt, and that is: computer models, where you essentially take preferences and subject them to computer evolutionary models, and see what those – what advantages those psychological preferences result in –

M: Right.

S: – to see how, ''statistically'', how that matches actual human preferences and human behavior. What do you think of that approach?

M: Right. Again, that's a very reasonable approach. That, actually, among the ones we've discussed so far, is probably the best.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: That goes back to the game-theoretical models of evolution of morality, actually, that i was mentioning some time earlier.

S: Right.

M: Again, those are very suggestive. And, you know, whenever we do get a match between a reasonably-built mathematical model and a reasonably–

S: ??? data.

M: Yeah, calibrated data, then – of course, that's a very interesting finding. It, by itself, of course, is not conclusive, but it's a heck of an interesting find. Now, that said, there are caveats there, too. Number one: Those models do depend, a lot, on the assumptions that are embedded in the parameters. So, the costs, for example, to the fitness.

S: Mm-hmm.

M: And those assumptions are often just a guess of the modeler. They're difficult to just find independently from empirical facts. This is not just evolution; it's a problem with game-theoretical models in general. The other thing is, again, it's difficult to get reliable or meaningful data from modern human populations, because modern human populations, unfortunately, are, by and large, so mixed up, in terms of cultural values and influences. And, also, it's very difficult to measure fitness in modern environments. In fact, one can make the argument that fitness in modern environments is essentially irrelevant to the question, because what we really want to know is, what were the fitness payoffs in the Pleistocene?

S: Right.

M: You know, during the time in which these traits really did evolve. Those fitness payoffs and trade-offs may have been very, very different from the ones you can measure today in modern human populations. So, again, it's not all B.S., but what i would like to stress is that i think evolutionary psychologists have a heck of a long way to go, and they don't seem—at least, i don't want to make a blanket statement here, but a lot of them don't seem to be particularly concerned (let's put it this way) about these sort of limitations, which have been pointed out to them by a variety of sources.

S: So, just to change gears a little bit, reading through your website—which, by the way, if i didn't mention it earlier, you have a website called rationallyspeaking.org, which has a large number of essays covering evolutionary biology, Creationism and Intelligent Design, philosophy, and you even venture out into the misty world of politics, which we don't deal with too much on this show—but i did notice that you wrote an essay about a topic which is – a humorous topic of interest to skeptics, which is about the Brights phenomenon fiasco a couple of years ago.

M: Yes.

S: Now, a quick history: A couple of years ago, a couple of humanists came up with the idea of essentially renaming those people who take a naturalistic worldview, who believe that there's nothing supernatural or paranormal in the world, and rather than being labeled with the negative terms that we've been stuck with—atheist, and skeptic –

P:

S: – that have a lot of negative connotations—to come up with a positive term, modeling this after the gay community essentially branding themselves as "gay", to basically engender a more positive outlook. Now, you wrote an article a couple of years ago, in 2003, essentially praising this movement and this idea.

M: Mm-hmm.

S: It seems to me that it hasn't really taken off in the last couple of years. Has your opinion of this changed at all since then?

M: Yeah, this is one of those areas in which i'm afraid – it was a good idea, but, as you said, it hasn't worked, and probably it hasn't worked partially for the very reasons that were pointed out by critics at the beginning, which is: The parallel with the gay community is in fact compelling. I think the analysis there is correct –

S: Right.

M: – that part of what helped—really, not the entire thing, but part of what helped—creating a positive image for the gay community is, in fact, the decision to call themselves gay. However—and, therefore, you know, something like "brights" sounds like a bright idea, as initial reactions went—however, unfortunately, "bright", especially in the ???, has a very different connotation than "gay". You know, nobody would disagree with being called "gay", no one would consider somebody a snob because they consider themselves gay.

S: Right.

M: The word "bright", on the other hand, of course, especially for certain people—and, i must say, especially in a country like the United States, with a long history of several different currents of anti-intellectualism—to consider oneself "bright", and actually vocally say so, it's obviously, if it's not the ultimate sin, it's pretty close to it. So, i suppose that's the reason the thing has not worked, and, therefore, i would like to concede that, yes, it probably wasn't exactly as bright an idea as it sounded at the beginning.

P: (laughter)

S: Yeah, it kinda struck us as misguided, and even other early supporters like Michael Shermer have backed off. He wrote a commentary saying that, basically, this was an attempt at rebranding –

M: Right.

S: – and it was done without any marketing research, and without – not even an email to the community saying, "Hey, what do you guys think about this?" Their defense was, well, we didn't want to do things by committee, it would have taken forever, and sometimes you just have to do things –

M: Right.

S: – to get them done. But, they really tried to impose a term onto a very – certainly independently-thinking group of people by fiat, and i thought it was doomed at the outset—especially, as you point out, you know, calling oneself "gay" is not an automatic offense to those people who are – to whom you are not referring, because they will not – being ''not'' gay is not an insult.

M: That's right. Not being bright –

S: Not being bright – yeah, "You're not bright." That is – so, no one is ever going to buy into a term that's an implied insult to everybody else.

M: Yes.

S: So, i thought, for that reason, it was kind of doomed to failure.

M: Yep.

S: It does bring up an interesting question, though: What ''do'' we call ourselves? I mean, one thing that's interesting that came out of the "bright" bruhahah was that, you know what? No one came up with a good alternate.

M: Right.

S: I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.

M: Well, so, first of all, it depends on what you mean by "ourselves", because, as you know, the skeptic community, for example, does include some people who ''are'' believers in some sort of supernatural –

S: Yeah, exactly.

M: In that case, you know, i don't want to use the term, for example, "secular humanist", because those people certainly wouldn't consider themselves that way. So, i think my answer to that is two-fold: On the one hand, i don't think we need ''one'' term, because we do actually have a large – several different kinds of constituencies that are – they join efforts in certain areas. Again, skepticism is one of them.

S:

M: You don't have to have – be a nonbeliever in order to be a skeptic in most areas of, you know, science and pseudoscience and so on. The other thing is, when people ask ''me'' what i am, normally i just call myself a "humanist"—not ever using the world "secular" because, at this point, there is essentially – there are no non-secular humanists, as far as i'm concerned, anyway.

S: There are no divine humanists?

M: There are no divine humanists. Even though, of course, you know that that's how the term originated in the Renaissance. There were ''only'' divine humanists, you know, religious humanists.

S: Right.

M: But, as far as i'm concerned, the term "humanist" is good enough to describe what i believe. I don't subscribe to any supernatural power out there, certainly none that is concerned with any human affairs, and, therefore, i am optimistic about, despite all the evidence, about what human beings can do. And, so, the word "humanist" fits pretty well.

S: Right.

M: If we're not talking about metaphysics, then i call myself a skeptic, because i think it still is the best term, especially if you want to glorify, the skeptic is not somebody who always says "no". It's a positive skepticism in the sense of David Hume.

S: Right.

M: A skeptic is somebody who entertains ideas and subjects them to rational and empirical scrutiny instead of either accepting them without hesitation or rejecting them outright.

S: I agree. I mean, i think – i'm happy to call myself a skeptic. Sometimes i'll modify it by saying i'm a scientific skeptic, but it's basically a skeptic. In terms of religious beliefs, i call myself an agnostic. But i've basically accepted the fact that, no matter what i call myself, i'm going to have to explain it a little bit.

M: Yes.

S: There is no one term that does not require some explanation. But, you know, that's the nature of this whole endeavor. There's a certain amount of complexity to our philosophy and our beliefs, and they defy a single, especially monosyllabic, label, right?

M: And, in fact, that's not a bad idea at all, because the fact that we have to explain ourselves as soon as we label ourselves is actually a good thing, because it implies that, look, part of what we are about is engaging in a discourse with people and educating people about certain aspects of thinking. So, yeah, it does require explanation, and i wouldn't want to see a badge in which it wouldn't require an explanation.

S: Right.

M: It's – explanations are good. They engage people in discussions.

S: Yeah, although, admittedly, the downside to that is when you're trying to market a magazine like ''Skeptical Inquirer'' or ''Skeptic'', or you're trying to sell an organization like the New England Skeptical Society, there is a branding, or a marketing, issue here. You do want a term that's going to be looked at initially positively, or at least curiously, and not have an initial negative reaction.

M: Sure.

S: I think that, culturally, historically, almost anything that would reasonably define us—and, again, as you point out, "us" is lots of different things, but with just a very loose philosophical connection—that anything that would define us probably has some negative baggage that goes along with it.

M: True. But that, again, could be worse. I mean, i just got from Paul Kurtz this nice certificate that says that i'm a ____. Now, there's a term that is not going anywhere.

S: A Upraxifer?

M: Yes.

S: Yeah. Paul Kurtz is, by the way, the founder of both the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and the Secular – the Council for Secular Humanist, and he has a long history of these really obscure terms. The original name for the ''Skeptical Inquirer'' was the ''Zetetic''.

M: Yeah. (laughter)

S: Recently, i was at a meeting with him where we were trying to figure out what to name our medical journal that looks at controversial and pseudoscientific claims, and he had another Greek name that nobody would know what it meant. And i can't even remember what it was. That's how bad it is. But –

M: And that's bad right there.

S: Yeah, fellow geek. It's a challenge.

M:

S: That's our cross to bear—in the skeptical movement, and in humanism, and in philosophical naturalism, and the entire spectrum and everything in between.

M: Yep.

S: Well, Massimo, it was a pleasure. We greatly enjoyed you having on our podcast, the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. You were, in fact, our first guest—our first guest skeptic on the show.

M: I am honored.

S: We appreciate it.

M: I'm honored. It was my pleasure.

S: Thank you. We hope to have you back sometime.

M: Yes, definitely.

B: Thank you, Massimo.

P: Thank you, Massimo.

S: And this is Steven Novella. Until next week, this has been the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.