SGUTranscripts - User contributions [en]

Category talk:Humor

2016-07-31T06:41:57Z

Sunny256: Answer to Av8rmike

== Remove Humor tag from the episodes? ==

Every episode contains some humour, so actually, all episodes should be listed. As it stands, nine epiodes are listed. Looks like only those are funny, and the rest are boooooring. 😉 Is it ok if I remove the humor tag from these episodes? [[User:Sunny256|Sunny256]] ([[User talk:Sunny256|talk]]) 2016-07-28 04:14+0200

:Sunny- I didn't come up with the original tag list, so I don't really know what the intent was with "Humor". I think it was to highlight those segment specifically played up for laughs, like Perry's "I have monkeys in my pants" bit. The category tag gets applied to the redirect page for individual segments and thus to the whole episode page. There are a lot of episodes that are missing categories, but there are also many that didn't have a "just for kicks" news story. Does this make sense? --[[User:Av8rmike|Av8rmike]] ([[User talk:Av8rmike|talk]]) 22:45, 30 July 2016 (AEST)

::Aha. Yes, I see how the category system works now, clever. I can just leave them as they are for now, and create redirects to hilarious sections. [[User:Sunny256|Sunny256]] ([[User talk:Sunny256|talk]]) 2016-07-31 08:40 +0200

Category talk:Humor

2016-07-28T02:28:54Z

Sunny256: /* Remove Humor tag from the episodes? */ It used some kind of strange time zone in the signature. Do not want.

Category talk:Humor

2016-07-28T02:14:43Z

Sunny256: /* Remove Humor tag from the episodes? */ new section

SGU Episode 232

2016-07-28T01:55:01Z

Sunny256: Proofread "Skeptic of 2009" and the Phil Plait interview, down to line 1142 (50%)

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Friday, January 1st, 2010 and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella–

B: Hey everybody.

S: Rebecca Watson–

R: Hello everyone.

S: Jay Novella–

J: Hola.

S: Mike Lacelle–

ML: Hey everyone.

S: and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hey everyone.

R: Who's that Mike guy? What?

S: Mike is joining us for our year end wrap up episode which has become, now, customary.

R: Oh.

S: So, welcome Mike. Evan, you're going to give us a This Day in Skepticism?

E: Absolutely, because it was 1975 when Kenneth Rooker discovered the long unknown winter destination of the monarch butterfly in the mountains of Mexico. It was a mystery for a long time.

S: Yeah.

E: I guess they had no idea where the heck the monarch butterflies, all 20 million of these butterflies, would fly off to.

J: How'd he do it? What? Did he follow them?

E: Using tags on the wings of some of the butterflies he followed their migration trails to Mexican territories and he studied it for, well, was it 38 years of data?

S: And also last night was a blue moon.

B: Yes.

E: That's right.

R: And a lunar eclipse. A partial lunar eclipse.

S: Yes.

R: From my vantage point. Not from yours.

B: Really?

S: Yes. In Europe not in the US.

E: I know. Europe gets–I know.

S: So it doesn't really count.

E: This hemisphere gets cut out of a whole bunch of–

R: All the best stuff's over here, guys. I'm telling you.

J: Did you see it?

R: I did see it. I saw the tail end of it as I was stumbling down the street toward the next party.

E: Now, the moon, though, did not turn the color blue.

R: No.

E: As the name would suggest.

R: Blue moon only means that it's the second moon in a month.

S: Second full moon in a month, yeah.

R: Second full moon.

S: And that happens on New Years Eve about once every 19 years. Next one will be in 2029.

B: Is that when Apophis is going to hit the earth?

R: It's around then. Yeah. So we might not even see it. We'll all be dead.

B: It's not going to hit.

E: They refined that, Bob, there's much less chance that that asteroid is going to hit.

B: Yeah. Not in 2029 anyway.

E: Yeah, right.

R: Did you guys see the news of the Russians, though?

E: Yeah! They're going to launch–

R: They're going to blow it out of the sky.

S: Good for them.

E: They're going to launch something and land on that asteroid.

R: Yeah right. I'm a little, shall we say, skeptical, cause I read some interview with the spokesperson and he said that the asteroid was going to come around in something like 2026 or '27. He was very vague and I was just thinking you should really have all your facts straight when you arm your missiles.

S: Yeah, you've got to be kinda precise on that point.

J: Yeah, isn't it possible that they could do something to it and actually jockey it into a worse position?

B: Oh yeah.

E: That was my thought too, absolutely.

R: Yeah.

S: They could knock it into one of the keyholes. They absolutely can.

ML: They'd need to hire Bruce Willis for the job.

S: So this is the episode where we reminisce about the best moments over the last year.

B: And decade.

S: And the SGU–and decade–and also we're going–

E: Hehe, alright.

S: –to talk about some–

B: The millenium?

S: –the best and worst of science and skepticism in the last decade.

J: Wow.

== Listener Feedback (3:11) ==
S: But first let's go through our listener feedback as to their most outstanding SGU moments of 2009. There were a few votes for best episode. I think the one that got the most votes, though, was Rebecca's wedding.

E: Of course.

B: Yay.

R: Aww.

ML: Yeah.

R: Thank you. That was my favorite, I think.

E: Well, that was a hopefully once in a lifetime event.

B: You think?

S: I think the second one was the Nexus 2009 with Richard Wiseman as a guest.

E: That was so much fun.

R: Yeah.

J: Yeah, he was awesome on the show.

S: Two live events got the most votes.

R: We did more live events this year than any previous year because we did those, we did DragonCon... Well, I guess that's it, but that's still a lot.

S: Yeah.

(laughter)

E: TAM, DragonCon, (inaudible)

S: And much more!

E: We'll be doing all that plus Australia this year.

R: That's true.

S: Yeah. We'll have even more live events in 2010. That's true.

R: Soon we'll get to the point where we're just doing a live show every week. That'd be fun. (inaudible) exhausting.

E: The live events are great. Being there. The immediate feedback from the audience is, well, just something we don't typically, obviously, typically don't experience and it's always great.

S: Yeah. It's good. Honestly it's good for a once in a while thing. The downsides to the live events are that they're technically challenging and often a little bit out of our control. We're at the mercy of whatever venue we're at.

R: Yeah.

B: Yeah.

S: And we also don't control the questions, so while live questions are great we can't use them to set ourselves up to talk about topics we want to talk about.

E: That's true.

S: And they tend to be–live questions tend to be a little repetitive. I mean it's good ever now and then but it's obviously not going to become a regular thing.

R: But there's the hanging out with you guys thing. That's always fun.

S: Yeah. We love it.

E: That goes without saying. Yes.

J: It's definitely a lot more fun for me, as a panelist, to see you guys and have the face to face interaction, and–

R: Definitely, yeah.

J: Crazier stuff happens at the live events like Bob coming out in a costume.

B: Yeah, that was awesome.

J: Rebecca getting married.

S: Right. Right.

== Guests of 2009 (5:12) ==

S: We had a lot of great guests in 2009. We always do a good job of pulling in some interesting interviews. Those that got the most votes: one was Michael Vassar, if you remember him. He's the singularity guy. A lot of people just said, "that singularity guy!"

(laughter)

S: Because it was just a very, not only interesting interview, but it was a little contentious and I think people liked that. The next one was Rusty Schweickart–

B: Yeah.

S: –if you remember the Apollo astronaut.

B: That was great.

S: That was, I think, my most surprising interview of the year. Phil Plait hooked us up with Rusty and it's one that I didn't see coming until Phil say, "Hey, I can get you this guy." And it turned out to be a really interesting interview. Just talking with him about his first hand experience with going up in Apollo was fascinating.

B: Yeah. That rocket door.  That's something you never ever read about. Never hear about. Just those subtle little things that only someone really on the rocket would experience and know. It's just fascinating stuff.

S: Yeah. One e-mailer said that he's been a real Apollo fan for years and thought he knew everything there was to know about that launch and yet he still learned new tidbits from Rusty on that interview.

B: Cool.

J: Yeah there was a couple of things that he said like how much the rocket compresses during liftoff, but when they turn those booster off and the whole rocket snaps back to it's original size, which, I think, it's a few inches that it crunched down, and it lurched them forward and his head almost hit the freaking control panel.

S: Yeah. Cause the loosened their straps. They shouldn't oughta had done that.

B: That's it.

B: It's hard to plan and expect that. In the simulation.

S: Yeah. That brings up that point that here you have a multi-million dollar program, how many engineers and just really people involved in thinking through every little tiny little detail and yet you can't anticipate things like the astronauts loosening their shoulder straps so they can move around a little bit more and then almost cracking their head open on the control panel. I mean, they couldn't anticipate that. There's no substitute for experience is the bottom line.

J: Yeah. And just talking to someone who actually went through that. I mean, not only is the guy an icon in history but he did it. He was there. He strapped himself into that thing and did that unbelievable, awesome, science thing that when I was a kid and I read about it and saw videos about it, that got me interested in science.

S: Any other interviews stand out in your guys' minds?

R: I think Tim Minchin got a number of votes on the year end wrap up thread.

S: Yeah.

R: And for good reason. Tim is always incredibly entertaining–

E: Absolutely.

R: –and such a wonderful performer. So he's a lot of fun to interview.

ML: Michio Kaku was awesome.

B: That was a great get. Yeah.

S: Yeah. Michio Kaku got a lot–

ML: Really interesting stuff.

S: Ken Miller, it was a great interview as well and got a lot of votes.

B: Yeah.

S: Ken Miller is an evolutionary biologist who deals a lot with Creationism and just, again, one of the most knowledgeable and thoughtful people, I think, on that topic. And Mark Crislip got a lot of mention as well. He's a recurring guest on our show. Did the H1N1 special with us and also has his own podcast, Quackcast, so he has a lot of experience behind the microphone. Mark is always fun to talk to.

ML: Award winning podcast.

J: Yeah. And his show is fantastic. I always learn something when I listen to his show. Actually, I learn a lot. He pile drives detail into his show like crazy. But man, his sense of humor just gets me. Like the whole time I'm listening to him I'm half laughing, you know?

E: Interview Brian Brushwood was great, as well, because who knew that later that year we'd be eating fire with him?

S: That's right.

E: On the campus of Yale.

S: There may be a video appearing on Youtube sometime soon of us eating fire with Brian Brushwood.

J: Yeah, he's a great guy.

S: Well there are many great interviews this year but those are the ones that got specifically mentioned by our listeners.

== SGU's Funniest Moment (9:24) ==

S: The next category was the SGU's funniest moment for 2009 so before I start listing what our listeners said, do you guys have any that stick out in your mind.

ML: There's some funny conversation between Rebecca and Steve about birds. Early on in the year.

S: Can you be more specific?

ML: It was about bird jizz or something like that.

R: Was that he jizz one?

S: You mean when we were talking about bird jizz? Yeah.

ML: Yeah. You remember that time, you were talking about birds? That time.

R: I do remember discussing jizz.

S: A lot of people liked when we were talking about vomix and pasketti and mamatos.

R: And mamatos.

(laughter)

S: Some people liked Rebecca's line. Rebecca's good for the one liners. She said, "I can't believe the chronic doesn't cure the chronic."

R: I was pretty proud of that one too, actually.

S: The Cluckasaurus rex discussion was good.

J: That was good, Ev.

E: Yeah. That was good.

== Best Science News Story of 2009 (10:17) ==
S: Best science news story of the year. This is an interesting one. What do you guys think?

B: The few that I liked–one of them was Ardipithecus ramidus. That was a tour de force of research and work that these scientists did over many years to put it all together before the submitted it which is what they did this year, which is basically an early stage of human evolution. It's older than Lucy. That was a tour de force, I think. That was a very intersting–the biggest surprise for me was the whole magnetic monopoles that supposedly found.

R: The monopoles, yeah.

B: That was–I remember when, Evan, you told me that, we were down at DragonCon you mentioned it–

E: That's right.

B: And I was like, "What? No way!" I just refused to believe it until I read about it. So that was–

R: That was when we were all at the Hibachi place or whatever.

B: Yeah. Right.

S: Yeah.

B: So, that was a big one for me.

S: That was definitely the most surprising headline I saw.

B: Yeah.

S: You know, "magnetic monopole?" That can't be.

B: What? Just a bare, positive or–I mean a North or South? What are you talking about? But yeah, it looks like they did. I haven't read much more about it but I think that they're still going with that interpretation. And then water on the moon. That was big. Big story. God, how many news items were made of that? That was really–a really cool thing that was finally proven.

S: Yeah. It's nice that there's water there if we ever do set up a base it'll certainly make it a lot more feasible–

B: Right.

S: to have some raw material there that's very useful. Bob, what's really interesting to me–the Ardipithicus got a lot of votes–a lot of magazines' top 10 lists. The one I didn't see was Ida or Darwinius masillae.

R: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

R: I was going to bring that up on worst science news.

S: Yeah. That was the biggest–the science was fine, but the media flap was a flop. I mean it was terrible.

E: Media flop.

S: They–this is the scientists they tried to be media savvy and they did a documentary and a website and a book and the hype that they put behind–it's basically a primate fossil. The specimen is lovely, I mean it's a very well preserved specimen.

B: Yeah. Beautiful.

S: And it is from a period of time potentially connecting two branches of primates. One leading to prosimians, like lemurs, and the other leading to monkeys, apes, and the group that also includes humans, but they tried to make it seem like this had special significance for humans, and it didn't. It was really–No one really bought that. It just seemed odd. And they also were making really ridiculous statements like "this is going to hit the scientific community like an asteroid." And they over sold it so much that it was just [sad trombone]. Nothing.

B: Yeah.

S: And now at the end of the year nobody even remembers it. So–

E: Apparently, I–

S: it's not even making anybody's list.

B: I forgot about it. If you didn't mention it I wouldn't have thought.

S: Yeah. Total fail.

B: Yeah.

S: It was a total science media fail.

B: Failure.

B: And you remember some of those articles written about it were really bad.

S: Yeah, yeah. Just terrible. I definitely like the water on the moon, Bob, and I would have to add to that methane on Mars.

B: Yep.

S: That's still in contention that that that could be from life.

E: Absolutely.

S: Sounds like they've ruled out meteors. There's no geological process that we know of that could explain it so it's something unknown or maybe it's little Martian critters.

J: Yeah. Bottom line if that's bacteria producing it that's the biggest news story of the century.

S: Yeah. Millennium in my opinion.

B: Yeah. Maybe next year.

E: Life one another planet. I mean that–psh–forget it.

S: Non-Earth life–that's huge. Huge.

R: Yeah. That would win.

E: And it was the year of H1N1, too. There was so much going on with the flu and the–you know–swine flu–so much press on it.

S: Yeah. And it's–

E: It's kind of passed us by right now but if you remember the summer months–

B: It was big.

E: every other headline was about H1N1.

S: Yeah. And the flu is still chugging along. I mean, we're still right in the midst of it. There is a lot of scare mongering about the vaccine. It made Discover's #1 science story of 2009 was the fear mongering surrounding vaccines and they got the story right, so good for them.

E: Yeah.

S: And here we are, you know, several months into the vaccination program and nothing. There's like no extra cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, there's no–really nothing rising above background level for any side effects so it's turned out, thank goodness, to be completely safe.

E: So you're saying the media hyped it? What?

S: It wasn't so much–it was definitely partly the media but the anti-vaccination movement really went full bore and also just a lot of alternative medicine groups and anyone who has a beef with science based medicine or vaccines particular used the H1N1 swine flu vaccine as a scare tactic and nothing. It turned out that, as we predicted, it's a safe vaccine. It's known technology. We'll monitor it closely but we don't expect any surprises and it turned out to be totally fine.

E: Yep.

S: I also think we should mention this was the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landings on the moon.

E: Oh. Good point.

S: And one of the coolest things to come out of that was–actually not directly tied to the anniversary but one of the coolest Apollo related stories was the LRO taking pictures of the lunar landing sites–the Apollo landing sites–

E: Yeah.

S: Including the footpaths of the astronauts shuffling through the regolith.

E: Part of the greater conspiracy.

S: Yeah.

(laughter)

R: There were a lot of great photos that came out this year. Especially more wonderful photo's of Cassini. Like the things that Carolyn Porco always shows in her talks. I think we talked about some of the pictures.

S: And we have to mention the Large Hadron Collider went online this year.

B: Back online. Yes.

R: We didn't die.

S: Back on. But it actually started smashing stuff.

J: And did break records. It's now the most–

ML: (inaudible)

J: the most energetic.

S: It is the most energetic collider in the world. Yep.

J: Yeah. Absolutely not an insignificant thing happening. That is the most expensive and complicated machine that humans have ever built, right?

S: Yes.

E: Absolutely. And number of black holes created by the Large Hadron Collider?

S, J, M, B: Zero.

R: So far.

ML: And Steve, you said it was the 40th anniversary of the Apollo moon landings, it was also the 40th anniversary of the Internet–

S: Oh, is that right?

ML: in 2009. Yes. The first 4 node network was made by ARPA–yeah, ARPANET is what is was called back then in December of 1969.

R: Which is related to the LHC, actually. I mean, it's the same people, isn't it?

B: Right. CERN, yeah.

S: Yeah. Yeah.

R: Yeah.

S: Some other ones that got mentioned was crocoduck.

R: Crocoduck is a good one.

E: Quacksnap.

S: The quacksnap, yep. The holographic universe.

J: That still totally freaks me out.

B: They like that one, huh?

S: Yeah.

R: Oh, yeah.

B: That was freaky.

S: Yeah. It's essentially like our universe–you can make an analogy between the way our universe is structured and a hologram meaning that it's just a–there's a graininess to our universe which is due to the fact that it's really a picture on–as if it were a picture on the surface of a sphere. I guess it's on a 4-dimensional–the surface of a 4-dimensional sphere. So it's kind of like a hologram. It's hard to do it justice without spending another 20 minutes talking about it but go back and listen to that episode{{link needed}}.

B: Yeah. That's it in a nutshell.

R: Basically, we're all living inside a snow globe.

S: Right.

E: Oh no. Ah! They're shaking it again! Ah! Hey, we were talking about 40th anniversary stuff. Other numbers or years of significance that occurred–150 years, Origin of Species–

S: That's right.

E: 200 years, Darwin's birthday.

B: Yeah.

E: 400 years, Galileo's telescope.

S: Very nice.

B: I'll throw another one in there 50 year anniversary of physicist Richard Feynman's very famous lecture, There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom that he gave at the American Physical Society at Caltech where he basically laid out the potential of nanotechnology, essentially. Really laid it out there, as far as I could tell, for the very first time. Anniversary of note, I think.

== Most Outrageous Illogical Statement or Pseudo-Scientific Claim of 2009 (18:37) ==
S: Let's go now to the other side–the flip side the most outrageous illogical statement or pseudo-scientific claim of the year. A lot of people voted for the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0c5yClip4o YouTube video on how homeopathy works]. Do you guys remember that one?

R: Yes.

B: That was awesome.

?: Loved it.

S: That totally incomprehensible nonsense about trying to explain homeopathy. It was really just amazing. The thing that always gets me is that you could take mass out of E=mc2 cause there's not that much mass in the universe so you can just eliminate it from the equation.

B: Yeah. That was good.

ML: They get an 'A' for effort.

B: Wow.

R: It's one of those things where it's delivered by someone who says something like that and then smiles and nods and then everyone in the audience just smiles and nods. "Yeah. Of course. You can do that. Yeah."

S: Oh, we didn't actually see the audience in that YouTube video.

J: You know, Steve, you don't have to–

S: You can imagine what the audience was doing but it's irrelevant. The thing is it was trying to make sense–

R: It's the assumed authority by the person who's speaking such completely and utter BS.

S: Right. Yeah. She projects that she should be having some authority, and she's spoke like a teacher talking to 5 year olds, too.

R: Right.

S: Which made it all the more entertaining as a skeptic.

B: A teacher who mispronounced people's names.

S: Yes.

B: Hawkings.

S: Hawkings. We–it's wonderful when homeopaths or pseudo-scientists do a better job than we can of making their belief systems seem ridiculous. I mean, we don't have to do anything else except point to that.

R: I think, one of my favorite news stories that–maybe it's true, maybe it's not pseudo-science, but the LHC reaching back in time to stop itself from happening.

S: Yeah, right.

ML: Yes.

R: I loved that story.

B: Yeah. That was fun.

R: Really? There's nothing you could say to that.

J: You so don't know if those scientists–we don't know if they were actually doing it as a thought experiment or if they were serious, right?

S: Yeah.

B: Well, I think they were serious, absolutely.

S: I think that was definitely the most bizarre thing to come out of a serious science paper.

B: Steve, could we go over some of the best Xbox360–

ML: Yes, let's do it.

J: Yeah. Let's do that.

E: Oh, wait wait. I have a quote for you. I want to see if you know who said this, in 2009. "They took this beautiful man and they basically put poison into him. Why couldn't they have built him up nutritionally and gotten rid of the toxins in his body? We have an epidemic going on and I have to say–"

J: Suzanne Somers.

E: Yay.

S: About Patrick Swayze.

E: Yes. About Patrick Swayze.

ML: Oh, god.

R: Defiling the memory of Patrick Swayze.

ML: Most outrageous statement, "Steve eats babies."

S: Yeah, the whole–the anti-vaccine movement deserves a big–you know–mention. They get my vote–I don't want to get ahead of ourselves but they're the skeptical–

B: Too late.

S: –jackass of the year collectively, and that certainly is part of why. But go back to the science stories the one that got a mention for ridiculous claims was when the study came out showing that essentially fake acupuncture was no different than quote/unquote "real" acupuncture and the scientists concluded that "therefore fake acupuncture must work too." Let's just turn the entire premise of scientific medicine on its head just for this one study.

J: OK, when you just said that, Steve, I had about a 3 second rage fire through me, you know? I just need to do something violent about that, right now.

R: I'm so glad I'm not in the same room with you.

J: Let's talk about something good. How about they found water on the moon.

S: It's true. They did. But don't forget–

J: That's fantastic.

S: –don't forget, quantum jumping! That was a good discussion.

(laughter)

R: Quantum jumping. That was a great one. That was where–

B: That was good.

R: –we went on a long rant about going to different dimensions, right?

S: To learn skills from other versions of yourself.

R: Yes.

E: Yeah.

R: Yeah.

J: Rebecca, you said something about how you could pay for it by loving yourself.

(laughter)

R: Which you know you would do.

S: Another item that got some votes was the claim that Thomas Jefferson was a creationist before the Origin of Species was published.

R: Oh, right.

S: Before evolutionary theory was presented. Yeah, that's meaningful.

E: Yeah.
== Jackass of 2009 (23:02) ==
S: Well, let's move on to the jackass of the year. We already mentioned the anti-vaccinationists so J.B. Handley I think has to stand in for that crew. I think he was the person who was most pushing that forward this year and the baby eating picture was just the most disgusting thing that they did. But just their increasing efforts to work tirelessly against vaccines as a science based health care intervention and just the tactics they use are absolutely horrendous, so they get my vote. They get my vote. I agree with Discover Magazine.

R: I think I would throw in with the BCA, the British Chiropractic Association, since I'm representing from jolly old England and just–you know–if any listeners have been asleep for the past year they're the people who are suing Simon Singh for libel.

S: Right.

R: For saying that their treatments are bogus. Which they are. So, I suppose I'll be sued now, too. Anyway, douchbags. Jackasses.

J: I kinda see Susanne Somers and Jenny McCarthy just kind of hovering around each other.

S: Yeah.

E: You gotta throw Oprah in there, I think, to that coven of witches, too.

S: Yeah. I think Oprah really won last year. I don't know that–she's kinda been coasting this year. Did she really do anything new? I mean she did Jenny McCarthy her own show.

E: She gave McCarthy the show. Yeah.

ML: Right.

R: Yeah.

B: That's pretty bad.

R: And she's retiring to, probably, only–she's retiring her show, I should say, to only rise up in a douchier way later, I'm sure.

S: Right.

R: But–

S: Not her media empire.

R: Right.

S: Jay, if you're going to mention Susanne Somers I think we have to also give honorable mention to other cancer quacks. Gonzales, whose treatment for pancreatic cancer this year was shown to be much worse than standard therapy. In fact, it was as bad, if not worse, than no treatment at all, and yet he continues to push it. And Hulda Clark who finally died this year.

E: Halllda.

S: It's an in memoriam.

J: Yep. Definitely.

R: And, how about the guy who treated the H1N1 cheerleader?

S: Oh, yes. But that gets all wrapped up–

R: Desiree Jennings.

S: Yeah. Desiree Jennings. It gets wrapped up in the anti-vax stuff. That was the other really nasty thing this year. The exploitation of that poor girl, Desiree Jennings. And that was Buttar.

R: Buttar, yeah.

S: The guy who treated her with chelation therapy. Totally disgusting.

E: That was bad.

ML: What about the pope?

R: The pope for–condoms

ML: For his comments on condoms and AIDS his recent rant about women.

E: Everything. This is one of the worst Popes in a long, long time.

R: He's a pretty bad Pope.

S: Worst Pope of the year.

ML: Palpatine.

(laughter)

J: I need more Popes.

E: I'm going to throw an honorable mention to Charlie Sheen. Charlie.

S: Oh, Charlie.

E: Who led the raves of the 9/11 deniers this year.

S: Yeah, but it was the death throes of the 9/11 denial–the Truther movement, right?

B: The death rattle.

S: The death rattle. They're pretty much done.

E: But he gets the honorable mention, also, because he was arrested for allegedly wielding a knife against his girlfriend.

R: That's true.

E: So, what we have here is a knife wielding 9/11 denier–

R: Allegedly.

E: I think when you put that combination together that is by definition a menace to society and therefor deserves mention.

S: Evan, you're poisoning the well, with the whole knife wielding–

(laughter)

R: No no. This needs to be said.

E: I said "allegedly."

R: It needs to be said, though. It happened. It's in the news.

E: It's true.

S: Alright. What about Bill Maher?

J: Yeah.

R: Yeah. Yeah. He's big news but only–the funny thing, though–Okay, so he was a jackass, yes, because of his denying any form of science based medicine but it's not through anything that he did specifically this year. It's only because of what that foundation did to give him a prize for it and I think they're the jackasses.

S: He got the–giving Maher the Richard Dawkins reward.

R: Yes.

S: Yeah. They definitely go on the list.

R: I think that they're jackasses for promoting such an anti-science jackass.

E: And they took a lot of heat for that.

J: Yeah. I agree with Rebecca.

B: But as long as he's an atheist.

S: Right.

R: Right. Even though he's not and has specifically said, "I'm not an atheist."

S: Yeah.

R: I mean they pretty much failed on every level there.
== Skeptic of 2009 (27:34) ==
S: Well, the final category that we put to our listeners was the skeptic of the year and the person who got the most votes was Phil Plait and we brought Phil on to chat with us for a few minutes about that and to let him know that he won. But before we go to that interview, let's go through the honorable mentions. Other people who were also mentioned by our listeners as skeptic of the year. Richard Wiseman got mention, as did Richard Dawkins and P.Z.–

J: Simon Singe.

ML: Simon Singh, yeah.

S: Simon Singh.

B: Singe?

R: Simon Singe?

S: Simon Singh for–

J: I can't help it. I always say that when I say his name. I love that. It's like a super hero name. Simon Singe.

(laughter)

S: And he has some kind of fire based super power.

J: Of course.

S: Simon Singe. That's actually pretty good!

ML: It's not water based, Steve.

R: That's why homeopathy–I can imagine like there's a homeopathy–

J: Yeah. He fights homeopathy with fire power.

R: –villain. Sprays them with water.

(laughter)

J: He's also known in smaller circles as The Evaporator.

(laughter)

E: Very small circles.

S: And Amy Wallace of Wired Magazine was mentioned as well, for her article on the anti-vaccine movement. Always nice to get a good, solid, mainstream journalist–journalism–

B: Yeah.

R: Yeah, she was fantastic.

S: –getting the science right.

R: Although, I think that–I probably gave it to Simon last year, too, but, I think I would have gone with him again this year because–

E: Nothing wrong with that.

R: –he's just so boldly leading the fight against the chiropractors as well as the entire British libel law problem. It's really impressive.

S: He definitely deserves props.

E: He's suffered the most arrows.

J: Yeah.

S: And some mentioned the crew over at Science Based Medicine.

B: Yeah.

S: So I have to mention my colleagues over there–

E: Hear, hear!

ML: Yep.

S: –who are, trust me, they are working hard with forming the Institute for Science and Medicine this year. They're now doing double time service, running Science Based Medicine and now ISM. Really, they've been incredibly hard working this year.
== Interview with Phil Plait (29:39) ==
S: So, let's bring Phil Plait on to chat about a few things. Phil, welcome to the Skeptics' Guide.

PP: Hey. How's it going guys?

B: Good, Phil.

S: It's always a pleasure to have you on and we wanted to chat you for our year-end wrap up show. Now we have a done a very informal survey of our listeners through the forums. So, it was somewhat selective–self selective sample of our listeners and we asked them to vote for a number of things including the skeptic of the year and guess who got the most votes.

PP: Uhh... Jenny McCarthy.

S: She was very close.

PP: Meryl Dorey. Who else is there?

S: Actually, Jenny McCarthy was in the running for jackass of the year.

PP: Really?

S: That's right.

E: She got plenty of votes.

PP: (laughter)

S: But, absolutely yeah. She's starting to become a favorite. But Phil Plait, #1 votes for skeptic of the year from our listeners.

PP: You're kidding! Really?

S: Yeah.

PP: What were they thinking?

S: Really.

PP: Was this before or after I announced I was leaving the JREF?

S: It was in the last couple of weeks, so... And also you got a lot of votes for favorite interview of the year but you know, you had more opportunities than most other guests.

PP: (laughter) That's not fair. I've been on more than Rebecca has recently.

S: Yeah! (laughter)

R: Whaaat?

S: Somebody calculated you've been on 5.1% of our episodes.

PP: Is that by time or by word usage or by Star Trek references?

E: By Stardate.

S: Yeah. Star Trek reference I think would be much higher than that. So congratulations. There's no trophy or anything. It's just–

PP: Well, I'd like to thank all the little people.

S: You get to come on our show and chat with us.

E: Yay!

PP: Yeah. That's really very cool. I'm surprised and grateful and... Insert cliche here.

S: Yeah.

PP: That's really cool.

S: Well, seriously, you are one of the work horses of the skeptical movement. You're ubiquitous, right? You do a lot of things.

PP: Well, that just goes to show you how disorganized and sad the skeptic movement is.

(laughter)

PP: You know, I'm not even wearing pants right now and so I think–well, I'm wearing sweat pants, I guess that counts, sort of. Just means we have to have more professionals getting involved. That's why D.J. Grothe's going to be running the JREF now. He's actually a little bit more professional than I am.

E: And he has a tailor.

PP: True. His beard is far more neatly trimmed than mine is.

J: But Phil, it's really true that you're amazingly accessible. When I listen back to the shows and whenever we have you on we all laugh a lot more, there's a lot more energy when we talk to you because, you know, you just–you push it up a notch.

PP: Well, I can hear that in your voice, so–

(laughter)

PP: No. Seriously, that's–it's terrific. That's really wonderful. Now if all those people would actually buy my book... That would be even better.

S: Let's not get crazy. So, Death from the Skies, is that out in paperback yet?

PP: Yeah! Yeah. It's got the creepy comic book cover and everything.

J: Phil actually had a version of it printed on one big toilet paper roll so you could just slowly read it when you're in the john.

PP: Read it one page at a time. That'd be great.

S: That's where I read it anyway.

B: (laughter)

J: That's actually a good idea, guys.

S: Yeah! Toilet paper books.

PP: I'm just thinking this through.

S: You have to read far enough ahead depending on how much you need to use.

PP: In fact, in fact, if you're going to write a murder mystery where the mystery is resolved on the last page, that's a great way to make sure people don't go to the last page and read it first, because you can't really get to it without making a huge mess.

B: Yeah. That is a good idea cause I think your friends would buy it, and your enemies.

J: That's right!

PP: True.

B: Cause your enemies would just really get into it.

PP: And they'd have to buy it in a 9 pack so it would really–you'd really boost sales that way, too.

E: Yeah, but it's super absorbent, so–

PP: You could see a wall of your books at Target.

S: But then–the thing is you couldn't share a bathroom with somebody because you miss the segments when they were using it.

PP: In fact, in fact, this–

B: His and hers toilet paper.

PP: –this would prevent piracy.

E: That is true.

PP: Nobody's going to steal it and it's your own personal download.

(laughter)

PP: Thank you. Thank you.

J: He's here all night.

E: I love toilet humor.

PP: And you can hear everybody on the SGU forums changing their vote right now.

(laughter)

E: Click click click-click.

S: So, Phil, what are your plans for next year?

PP: You know, blogging. Secret stuff I can't talk about yet.

S: Just more of the same plus the secret stuff you can't talk about.

PP: Well, less of some things but more–yeah, it'll be writing the blog I've got–I've got some other writing things I'd like to do. I've been tossing around some ideas for a long time and it just depends how much time I have. I just wrote a couple of articles for the print version of Discover Magazine. They come out with a special issue every few months. This one's called "Extreme Universe!" and they asked me to write short blurbs about my favorite bad and good science and science fiction movies, so... That's available on newsstands everywhere, so you can pick that up. But I'd like to do more for that. I've been wanting to write for the print version of the magazine for a long time so we finally got around to doing that, testing that out. You know, I really enjoy writing. I haven't gotten tired of it yet, which surprises me because I get tired of almost everything after a short period of time. I'm still really enjoying sitting down and just talking about this stuff. So I'm hoping to do more.

S: Phil, let me put you on the spot and ask you a couple quick questions.

PP: Okay.

S: Biggest astronomy news item of 2009.

PP: Water on the moon.

S: Okay. What about methane on Mars?

E: Close second?

PP: The methane on Mars is still too much of a mystery and not well understood.

S: Okay. Fair enough.

PP: For me to be–It's big news, it's very interesting, but we don't know how big it is as opposed to water on the moon which actually is extremely interesting.

S: Yeah. We know exactly what the utility of that is.

PP: Yes.

B: Right.

S: Yeah. Phil, biggest astronomy news item of the decade.

B: Ooo.

PP: Oh... I don't know. That's too hard.

S: Okay.

PP: Now we had basically kind of sort of direct evidence for dark matter in the Bullet Cluster observations.

S: Yeah.

PP: This cluster–the two different clusters of galaxies slammed into each other and you can measure directly where the gas is, you expect in a head on collision between two clusters the gas in the clusters would slam into each other and stop dead like two cars on the highway moving at opposite–head on at 60 mph they kind of stop. The stars pass through each other, the gas stops. But the dark matter, theoretically should just keep going and when you measure the effects of dark matter through it's gravity that's exactly what they found.

S: Right.

PP: So, it's a statistical observation in that you can't point and say that's where the dark matter is, kinda sorta. It's more like–it's like predicting how many times you're going to flip a coin heads if you flip it 100 times. It's about 50. And so you kind of statistically can say the same thing about dark matter. Where do you expect to see it? By measuring it's effects on the light coming from background galaxies which gets affected as it passes through the dark matter. And when you do that you say, "Oh look. The dark matter's moved on," and so you can just clearly see that the dark matter exists. And if that makes no sense I'm actually waving my hands. If you could see me the hand waving makes it all very clear. But you can look up "Bullet Cluster" on the web and you'll find things about that.

S: Yeah. Phil, one more question. We're talking about the big winners and losers over the last decade in terms of not who's right or wrong, but who has advanced their agenda. Now I'll just get your opinion about one thing. Moon hoaxers. Do you think the last decade was good for them or bad for them?

PP: Uhm... Well, 2001 is when the Fox TV show came out. The conspiracy theory. Did we land on the moon? And so that was a huge boost for them. There have been–you know, it's been mentioned in a couple of movies and it's kind of gotten into the popular culture. However, I think most people understand that the real promulgators of this conspiracy theory are lunatics and so it's–on the other hand they've gained a lot of ground with kids who are young and don't know how to parse a logical argument very well.

S: Do you think the Mythbusters special on the moon hoax took a chunk out of them?

PP: You know, I have no idea. It's so hard to measure these sorts of things. If you measure it by number of YouTube commenters, which is of course the gold standard of how things work, certainly there are a lot of these guys out there. There are a couple of them out there that call me names that always crack me up. It probably infuriates them that I ignore them, so, that makes me happy. I think they're probably gaining ground in younger kids but that's the kind of thing that people tend to grow out of. So, I really don't think 5 years from now somebody who's 12 years old and thinks the Apollo landings are fake. When they're 17 I think they're going to look back and think, "Oh, what was I thinking."

S: Yeah.

PP: So, there you go.

S: Well Phil, it's always awesome to have you on the show.

PP: Ah, it's been great. Happy New Year.

S: Yes. Happy New Year. Looking forward to another banner year of skepticism.

PP: Yay.

J: Phil, you're awesome.

PP: True.

(laughter)

PP: No. You guys are. And I'm pointing right at the little avatars of you on Skype right now.

J: Aw, thanks Phil.

E: Avatar. Seen that movie.

PP: Oh, god. No. No!

E: It's Avatar.

PP: Don't make me talk about that.

S: Alright. Goodnight Phil.

J: See ya next year, Phil.

E: Goodnight, Phil.

PP: Talk to you later.

== 2000 to 2010 in Skepticism (39:15) ==
S: Well, I thought we turn from 2009 to the last decade and talk about–what I want to do is I want to throw out to you guys some big topics that skeptics deal with and then we're going to chat about whether or not we thought over the last decade they were winners or losers.

B: Okay.

S: Okay?

R: Okay.

=== Creationism/Intelligent Design (39:39) ===
S: So, I'll give you an easy one to start out with. For example, the whole Creationism/Intelligent Design movement. What kind of a decade did they have?

R: They lost so much.

J: Lost.

B: Big time. Dover was one–

E: Dover crushed them.

B: Dover. Huge huge epic fail on their part.

E: It didn't destroy them. You can't destroy these unsinkable ducks, but, I mean that Dover case was a nice, nice victory for science and skepticism.

R: Right. And speaking of that and just to reach slightly back to the skeptic of the year I think Eugenie Scott deserves a mention for continuing that fight in Texas this year with the Texas State Board of Ed fight to include–to keep science in the textbooks.

S: Yeah. Well, she's on the short list for skeptic of the decade. Even though we didn't ask for that category. I definitely think she's someone who over the last 10 years has consistently fought for science in that arena. And she's gotten–definitely this year, though, we should mention, she was given a couple of really significant awards. Recognitions of her work. She was honored by the California Academy of Sciences in October and she won the Gould prize by Scientific American. So–

E: That could have gone to so many people.

S: The Steve J. Gould prize. Yep. So, she definitely deserves mention. What about–so I agree that in general the Creationism/Intelligent Design movement, they're intellectually bankrupt, they're really desperately flailing around for a strategy. They got hit hard at Dover. There new strategy in the last decade has been the academic freedom angle.

J: Yeah. Expelled.

S: Which I don't–Yeah, I don't think–Expelled, I think was a failure.

E: I think so, too.

S: Yeah. It doesn't have that much legs but they did make some mischief in Texas if you recall–

E: Textbooks.

S: this past year with the textbooks. So with the science textbooks standards.

E: Kansas. Georgia. Every couple–yeah, every year or two it's a new state. They move around they test different waters but thankfully they continue to largely fail.

J: I don't know if I totally agree with you guys. I mean, I think, just the fact that they were even considered in what they were basically trying to do. I mean, they caused a lot of trouble.

R: Yeah, but in every major battle they have lost.

S: If we think about it this way, where were they 10 years ago and where are they now? Have they really advanced their cause. I don't think have. I think they've basically lost the last decade. Not that they're–you're right Jay we vigilance. They're causing mischief. They are continually–they have resources and they're looking for new strategies all the time, but I don't think they've advanced their cause. Certainly the science has relentlessly gone against them. They haven't really come up with anything new or interesting to say.

J: What about that creation museum in Kentucky? They came up with that. 

S: Yeah. It's basically. It's a laughing stock. They're doing a good job catering to their core. Which is easy. That doesn't advance you're movement. They're just now stroking their core. That's basically all their doing.

R: Let's as Kent Hovind if he thinks the decade was a good one or a bad one.

(laughter)

R: Oh, wait. We can't, because he's in jail.

E: Kent Hovind, also know as 655321.

?: (inaudible) 321

=== Ufology (43:03) ===
S: Okay. What about Ufology?

B: I think they didn't make hardly any ground. I put them in the loser category for this past 10 years.

J: Yeah, me too.

B: First off, digital technology really hurt them because everybody's got a camera these days and still it's the same old crappy video and images. There's no real in your face, "Holy crap look at that" type of thing–

S: Yeah.

B: which is what you'd expect with so many camcorders and cameras all over the place. And, Steve, you made a good point in your blog about it that they didn't come up with any new twists this decade. The kidnappings or abductions or–

S: Yeah. Previous decades they've added alien abductions or alien implants or something. There was really nothing new that I could think of.

B: Yeah.

S: No new twist on the mythology. They didn't really advance the mythology at all.

R: Well, and to build on Bob's point about digital technology hurting them I think it also hurts them in another way. Not just that there's a lack of evidence considering that everyone's walking around with a camera, but also, everyone's walking around with a camera and they actually are taking photos and things of odd phenomena–

E: Smoke rings–

R: such as–or like the mysterious swirls over Russia–

E: Right.

R: or whatever it was.

S: Norway.

R: Norway.

S: Norway spirals, yeah.

R: Right. So a lot of people got that on film and so people were able to look at it, examine it, and then explain it. Missiles and whatnot. So, I think it hurts them, too, because it's easier than ever to investigate these things.

B: And another wrinkle on that is the appreciation I think of easy it is to fake any of that. People look at it and their first thought is gotta be, "Alright. Now that could have been faked using whatever." Photoshop or other digital technology to make it look convincing but still be very fake.

S: Know what's the funny? The half a dozen or so times I've blogged about this issue and say essentially there's no smoking gun evidence of alien spacecraft, there's not good videos, no good photographs–

J: Yeah.

S: Invariably somebody shows up in the comments and say, "No good videos? You're just not looking hard enough. Look at this." And then link to some total crappy video. It's just happened today–

J: Just today.

S: we were linked to a video of this blurry blob dangling from a string. I mean, really?

(laughter)

S: We have a different definition of compelling evidence.

E: Plan 9 from outer space.

J: But look at this. This is the best we have.

ML: Or that video of the alien in the window.

E: How much is the alien in the window?

B: Oh my god. Remember that?

S: That was this year. We need to mention that, as well. That guy now is pushing forward this–the proposal to get–

B: The committee, yeah.

S: Denver to spend money on a committee for alien relations.

E: Denver. Oh, what a waste.
=== ESP Research (45:54) ===
S: Alright, next topic. ESP research.

B: Nowhere. They got nothing.

S: I think you've got to put them in the loser column, too, this year, because essentially, again, no new paradigm of research and they've basically admitted that, "Yeah, the results are not reproducible and we have nothing." That's like the big conclusion of all the research that's been done. They really–they don't have anything.

E: All margin error, within the noise levels.

S: Yeah.

E: That's where all activity takes place.

S: They came up with the notion of the decline effect. The decline effect means that the better the research you do the effect size declines. Until it disappears.

R: Right.

E: Hey, welcome to science.

(laughter)

B: Welcome to science.

S: They're trying to say this is a feature of ESP.

J: Oh my god.

S: Rather than a feature of the research.

B: So it's nonexistence is a feature. Nice.

S: Yes. It's inability to document–

R: It's not a bug. It's a feature.

B: Are you kidding me? They're basically saying, "The harder you look, and the less proof you find the harder you look, that's proof."

S: That's part of–

R: Yeah.

S: that's just like saying, "Bigfoot can become invisible and travel interdimensionally. It's just like saying fake acupuncture works too."

R: "Your skeptical energy is disrupting the thing."

J: Wait a second. I see a pattern there.

(laughter)

=== Bigfoot and Cryptozoology (42:28) ===
S: It's all post hoc rationalization as to why the science is invalidating your pseudo-science. Alright. Bigfoot and cryptozoology?

B: Oh, come on.

J: Oh, god.

S: They're nowhere.

R: Continues to be a joke.

B: The biggest thing that happened to Bigfoot was a frozen rubber suit. There you go.

B: A frozen rubber suit.

R: Yeah. That made them all look completely ridiculous. As if they didn't already.

S: A cop who got fired from his job.

B: What made it cool was the suit was from one of my favorite Halloween websites.

E: Costumeurs. 

B: Merchandise websites. Horror dome!

J: I'll never forget that when, Bob–

B: That's a great website.

J: when Bob first saw the costume unfrozen he calls me up and he goes, "I know what company made that, and it's awesome."

(laughter)

B: It's a high end Bigfoot costume, absolutely.

E: Who made the pig guts that they poured all over the costume in the Styrofoam container.

B: That was real stuff. They used some real roadkill didn't they?

R: There was possum DNA in there. Nobody thinks about the poor little possum.

E: Headline read, "Bigfoot Related to Possum." "DNA Concludes"–

S: This was the decade that the surgeons photo was revealed as a hoax in a deathbed confession.

B: Yep. That's right. I forgot about that.

S: Of the Loch Ness monster. The famous Loch Ness monster photo, also called the surgeons photo.

E: The plank of wood.

R: And also with the Bigfoot footage, the famous Paterson film–

E: Oh, the Paterson film, yeah. That was also–

R: someone took that and overlapped and overlapped the frames so that–they steadied the camera to make it look like it was obviously a person walking.

S: Yes. Yeah, right. And we also have to mention on the other side that skeptical scientists investigating this area, Joe Nickell in particular, have made some advances. They've figured out that a lot of sea monster sightings are probably schools of otters swimming in formation.

R: Yeah.

B: Oh, yeah. Right. Excellent. Good one, Joe.

=== New Ageism (49:13) ===
S: Alright. Next category, New Ageism.

B: Ooo, that that–

R: So that's kind of an open category.

B: I think it's–

J: I think it's doing fantastic. It's getting into our healthcare.

R: Well, yeah, that's what I was going to say. If you include alt med in new age then I would say they're winning. Yeah. Or they're better off now than they were 10 years ago.

S: Well, I think they're winning even if you set aside alternative medicine as a separate issue and if you look–there was a recent–we'll probably discuss this in more detail in a future episode{{link needed}} but there was a recent Pew Forum survey looking at a number of belief systems. One was have you ever had a religious or mystical experience and that was skyrocketing from 19562 at 22% saying, "Yes," to 2009, 48% saying, "Yes."

B: Wow.

S: More than double. And the last the decade's a very steep incline up.

J: Blame the counterculture.

S: Yeah. The general sense of mysticism and spirituality and new agey type of beliefs I think are–were advancing their cause in the last decade, in a number of ways. Yeah, alt med only being one of them.
=== Ghosts (50:22) ===
E: You know what else when on the rise, I think, in this decade? I don't know if it was on your list–you were gonna bring it up but ghosts.

S: That's the next one on my list, Evan.

B: Yeah.

S: Ghost hunting–and I agree, and I think that the success of Ghost Hunting as a belief system is entirely due to reality TV.

B: Yep.

ML: Those plumbers.

E: Absolutely. So many TV shows out there on this ghost stuff.

B: I got a list. Ghost Hunters. Paranormal State. Ghost Adventures. Most Haunted, not to mention Medium and Ghost Whisperer.

S: And the G Hunters, don't forget them.

B: Oh yeah.

ML: The G Hunters.

B: Right.

E: I've only seen one episode, though.

B: I think this is transitory, though. I think these aren't going to last that–cause how many times have I seen a preview where all–their main evidence for the week is somebody saying, "Did you hear that?" or, "Something touched me," and that's it.

S: Yeah.

R: I don't know. People–Are people still watching those?

B: I guess.

R: Like is there anyone out there that's still watching that going, "Ooo! Scary."

E: They do. I overhear talk in my office. We've got 40-50 people in the office and at least 3 or 4 of them on any given week–they weekly tune into these shows and–

S: Well, what do they say about it Evan? What is there to say? "Did you see that guy really scare himself?"

R: Right.

E: Exactly.

(laughter)

E: That's what they should be saying but no, they have no clue. They're all caught up in–

B: "Did you see that anomalous infrared image?"

(laughter)

E: It's adults who like to scare themselves. That's all it is.

S: They need to find another hobby.

E: Yeah. Try masturbation.

B: Why? Steve, they're getting rich off of that hobby.

S: I'm talking about the viewers.

R: Viewers, right.

(laughter)

B: Nevermind.

S: No. You're right. For them it was unbelievable. But, I agree, this is going to run it's cycle and it will go away.
=== Paranormal (52:04) ===
S: What about just the paranormal in general?

R: Paranormal in general? I–

S: Anything paranormal.

B: I'd give it an increase. Slight uptick, maybe.

R: I don't know. I'm going to call this one even.

S: Yeah, I think I'm with you, Rebecca. I think it's even.

=== Scientology (52:19) ===

J: Alright. I'll throw another one out there. Scientology.

R: Definitely down.

ML: Oh yeah.

S: They're way on the wane.

J: I don't agree. I don't agree.

S: Their numbers, Jay, their numbers on the wane.

R: Their numbers are dropping.

J: According to who?

R: More and more mainstream–St. Petersburg Times runs a weekly Scientology watch now. Anonymous. All of their skeletons have been dragged out of the closet at this point and they're a total joke.

E: And France has all but illegalized them.

B: Jay, I got two words for you man, couch incident.

(laughter)

B: You know when Tom Cruise jumped on that couch on Oprah and all the other stuff that he said he made Scientology an absolute joke. And did you guys know–I didn't realize this, that there was a common expression called "jumping the couch", kind of like when a TV show jumps the shark.

ML: Jumps the shark, yeah.

B: Used to describe someone going off the deep end in public. Jumping the couch. How awesome is that? I think he hurt Scientology more than anything did because he's so high profile. He was their #1 guy and everyone thought–he went from being at the top box office sensation really, in the world, one of the biggest guys to being a joke. Like, this guy is crazy and something's wrong with him.

S: Don't forget the South Park episode.

R: Yeah.

B: Oh, yeah, the closet.

S: Which–the thing about Scientology, like any cult–

B: Right.

S: is that it trades on secrecy. It advances itself by not letting people know what they really believe until you're deep on the inside. Once that information gets out, once people realize that Scientology is all about this guy Xenu and alien spirits it loses a lot of their ability to advance itself. So I think that's hurt them and those are the kinds of things that once the genie's out of the bottle it's out. So, I've think they've had to actually–had some permanent harm done to them in the last decade. But speaking of South Park, those guys have to get mentioned as–

B: Yeah.

S: one of the real forces of skeptical goodness over the last decade.

E: Definitely.

ML: Oh yeah.

E: Without a doubt.

B: Even though they might not want to put themselves into that group.

S: They don't like labels.

B: No.

S: They don't like labels. Cause they want to go after everyone equally.

B: Yeah. Everyone's fair game to them.

S: Yeah. Right.

=== Alternative Medicine (54:28) ===
S: What about–we mentioned alternative medicine already so let's talk about that just by itself.

R: Yeah. I think that's–

J: Yeah, they're winning this decade.

R: Yeah. Unfortunately.

E: It's on the rise.

J: Infiltrated big time.

R: Mostly with the anti-vax stuff, but also, I think, homeopathy.

J: Academia, from just the stories Steve has told it's getting down right scary what they're doing at universities. It's like, "Wow.

S: They certainly have made ground in the last 10 years. However, I think that they are–

J: Peaking?

S: they're peaking–

J: I hope.

S: and their–in the last decade I think they were cashing in on a lot of the ideological advances they made in the 1990's. The real shift was in the 1990's where fraud because alternative. That's where that shift occurred.

J: Right.

S: And now they're just running with that. And while they continue to gain ground with that I think also in the last 10 years now the counter movement is really organizing and there's now, I think, a scientific backlash forming against alternative medicine and again the way you take the wind out of the sails of movements like this is to expose it for what it really is. This is not about providing alternatives or integrating ideas or anything. This is just about selling fraudulent healthcare with a new flashy label. That's all it is. And once we make that point and really drive it home I think the whole appeal of alternative medicine goes away. So, that is hopefully we're starting to turn the corner there.

J: Yeah.

S: Maybe we'll have this chat again in 10 more years and we'll see how that goes but that's what it seems to me.

J: Hope you're right, man.

S: Anti-vaxxers won this last decade. Flat out. They went from nowhere 10 years ago to being a major movement with–causing a lot of mischief. All the numbers went in their direction.

B: And death. Don't forget death.

S: Vaccine compliance–

E: Gee. Good point, Bob. There's a direct correlation there.

S: Yeah. No, vaccine compliance is down and vaccine preventable diseases are coming back. And they are well funded, well organized, they have now celebrities on their roster. They hugely advanced their cause in the last 10 years. But again, I think there's a cycle to these things. There's–the backlash is happening and we are starting to get mainstream media who see them for what they are and–

J: And we have front line skeptics like Richard Saunders and Dr. Raichi  in Australia, where they have it bad, over there.

S: Yeah.

J: And they're doing a lot of good.

S: They're doing a lot of good work. There's a lot of organizations doing a lot of good work. Paul Offit–

R: Paul Offit.

S: yeah, has been sort of the tireless guy on the front lines taking a lot of personal heat for tirelessly fighting against the anti-vaxxers so he gets props for that.

E: Absolutely.

B: And also, Steve, we're seeing the outbreaks of mumps and measles and things. Things that we thought were gone for good. How long can the anti-vaxxers really last in the face of that? Imagine–and I think it's going to get worse in the next few years it's gonna get worse.

S: Yeah.

B: At some point people are going to be like, "Woah. Wait a second. Look what's going on." People are going realize the correlation here and isn't that going–

S: Yeah.

J: I hope so, Bob.

B: to really burst their bubble at some point?

S: That's what some people think. That when the vaccine preventable diseases really start to come back that will start to turn the tide against the anti-vax movement. We're trying to do it before it gets to that point.

B: Right.

ML: Yeah. It's just too bad it has to get to that point.

S: Yeah. Like the safety valve. Eventually, it'll get to that point. But, I also want to point out that the anti-vaxxers have advanced their cause in the last 10 years despite the fact that the scientific evidence has gone completely against them. 10 years ago there really wasn't much published about thimerosal. Now, 10 years later, we pretty much know it's not associated with autism. Every–there have been more that a dozen solid studies showing that there's no correlation.

B: Right.

J: I know, but Steve, the fear mongering gives them the win.

E: Move the goal post.

J: You can always pull people in with fear.

S: It's true, temporarily. I think, long run the scientific evidence works in your advantage.

R: Although it might not hurt if we campaigned with protests with signs that show exactly what someone looks like when they are stricken with polio.

S: Or dying from measles.

B: Want to know how good the vaccinations have worked? I don't even know what measles and mumps are. I don't know what they look like.

R: Yeah. And that's the problem, I think, is that a lot of people think of them like, "Oh, it's like the chicken pox. You have it when you're a kid. You get over it. It's fine." They don't realize exactly how debilitating these diseases can be. How deadly.

J: That's part of the problem. Yep.

=== Global Warming Advocates and Dissidents (59:18) ===
S: Okay. Next topic. Ready for this one?

B: Yeah.

E: Ready.

S: Global warming advocates and dissidents.

R: Oh, god. Can we just skip it?

J: Oh, god.

ML: Christ.

S: Who won the last decade?

B: I refuse to talk about it.

S: Who's making more ground. Is it the global warming advocates or global warming dissidents?

R: I think advocates only because–

J: Advocates.

B: The advocates.

E: Advocates.

R: talk about it. But, I think it's a close call because the opposition has been so vehement and like disturbingly so. And both sides are so politicized and there's horrible people on both sides. I mean, it's–

S: Yeah.

E: Look at the way corporations and governments are moving, though. The vector is towards solutions for global warming. So, I think in that sense, they're winning out.

J: Yeah.

S: I think I'm going to call this one a tie.

J: Really.

S: Yeah. I think so. I think that the global warming advocates certainly have been successful in setting the agenda and in talking about solutions to the perceived problem of anthropogenic global warming. Global warming dissidents have been very successful in promoting that there isn't a consensus on global warming. That the science is controversial, the science itself. That there's a conspiracy. Even if you–the very recent episode of climategate. They use episodes like that to cast a significant amount of doubt on the notion that there is anthropogenic global warming. So both sides, I think, have advanced their opinions and they're pretty much going head to head in the public arena. I don't know that I could give a clear victory to either side.

R: I think we're all going to lose. That's my pessimistic prediction.

E: Science is going to solve this problem. One way or the other.

S: I agree. I think while this debate rages the science will steadily advance and will solve the problem for us.

E: Yep.

R: I disagree.

E: I have total faith–

(laughter)

S: Not that I would say that I have faith that science will give us a utopia no mater what we do, but I do think that these problems are solvable. They're solvable by incremental scientific advance.

R: I don't disagree with that. What makes me disagree in general with the idea that it will win the day is not that I don't think that science can't come up with these–scientists can't come up with these solutions it's that the politicians and the corporations will implement them. But that remains to be seen.

S: Well, I think–I'll continue to disagree with you in this reason–for this reason. I agree with you that we can't count on politicians to do the right thing. Nor can we count on corporations to be selfless. I think the kind of technological advances that are going to improve the situation are ones that are win win. Ones that are advantageous to corporations and to people. When you can save money and also lower carbon footprint, you'll do it. So when those things come online people will do it. People will get light bulbs that use–

R: If it's not too late.

S: There's that question–

R: By that point the 3rd world countries will be–could be wiped out by drought. So, it's kind of a–

S: That's a question, that, yeah is a tough call. Extrapolating into the future in terms of–I think long term that we will fix this problem. Also, we can't–even though it may be too late in terms of how much CO2 we've already pumped into the atmosphere but we–I think it's possible we can come up with solutions even for that. Even–not just talking about putting less CO2 into the atmosphere going forward–

J: Removing it.

S: Yeah. Dealing with the CO2 that's already there. I think we'll be fine, is my opinion. But no one can predict the future.

R: I hope you're right.

E: Except for psychics.

=== The Skeptical Movement (1:03:20) ===
S: So, final category is the skeptical movement. Where are we now compared to 10 years ago?

J: I would say–

E: God bless the internet.

(laughter)

J: Well, look at what's taken place over the past 10 years. First of all, the podcasting universe took off and so did skeptical podcasts and we have a lot of people getting a lot of very good podcast programming. I think it's fantastic in this way and that we have the–now this whole medium didn't exist before.

S: Yeah.

J: Also, look at how TAM has evolved over the past–we're up TAM8 is coming up so over the past 7 years. We've all heard the story about how what the attendance was like at TAM early on versus today and the demographic has changed. And also just blogging in general, I think, is a good way to gauge how well skepticism is doing. I think we have larger numbers now, today–much, much larger numbers today that we did 10 years ago.

ML: Oh yeah. Definite winner in the last decade.

R: And in terms of battles won, if you look back over all the things we just went over, most of those are losing and I think that's because of the response from skeptics and scientists. I think it's an overall win in terms of more people getting involved not just the podcasts and the blogs as Jay said, those are very important, but they're–it's encouraging grassroots activism of a sort.

S: Yeah.

R: Getting people really involved and making a difference.

S: Absolutely.  If you think about the previous decade there was a lawsuit–a libel suit by Uri Geller against James Randi and–

J: Oh God. Remember?

S: then PSICOP. Without getting into the horey details  the bottom line was that even though the libel suit itself failed it was successful in intimidating the skeptical movement and keeping the skeptical movement more fractured than it otherwise would have been. It was a very successful lawsuit from the point of view of bullying and intimidation, even though it failed legally. You fast forward to this year, we talked about Simon Singh, and the response is very different. Rather the libel suits against prominent skeptics fracturing the movement and hurting us, we rallied behind Simon Singh. It strengthened us and it completely back-lashed against the BCA. And the difference there is that now we are much better networked and organized because of the internet and because we're a bigger, more vibrant, group. We definitely are younger. We have more energy and we definitely have our mojo. I think the last decade–this is an easy call was a huge, big win for the skeptical movement.

B: Yep.

E: Sí.

== E-mails of 2009 (1:06:14) ==
S: So, I pulled out two of–two e-mails that I got over the last year that stuck out. So, I'm going to read them very quickly and you guys if you have any that you wanted to quickly read.

J: Dear skeptics, you suck.

(laughter)

S: As typical we get a lot of feedback. We appreciate the feedback we get from our listeners. We read every e-mail even though, I regret the fact that we don't have time to answer every e-mail I promise you we do read every single one and it's still like 95% positive, I think, and 5% negative. Almost all the negative e-mails we got this year was over our coverage of climategate, actually. Just because that's such a politically contentious issue.

R: Yes. And we look forward to deleting your angry e-mails about tonight's episode.

E: Yes. In 2010 we'll be (inaudible).

B: Or we might save them for next year.

S: But we do love the positive feedback just because it does–it's helps us know that we're having an impact and that's important to keep us motivated to spend all the time and effort that we do in putting out this podcast. So, thanks to everyone who took the time to write us. But I do want to read a couple that stood out to me. Here's the first one. Actually, for some reason I don't have the name of the person who sent this in, but they wrote,
<blockquote>Hey. I'm a completely new listener to your program. My doctor actually prescribed a new drug for my anxiety and noticed that I had my iPhone with me at the consultation. From there he told me that it would be a good idea to sign up to your podcast. He also stated, and I quote, "These guys say that's it's your 'escape to reality'." I was really impressed that, one, I wasn't lectured by my doctor to get therapy, and two, my doctor related to me and gave me useful information in an attempt to find a way to make sense of the horrible bullshit that I had consistently feed into. This bullshit is fed to me by the mainstream media. I would like to express my thanks for your podcast in helping me make the first steps in overcoming my anxiety. However, I still am dealing with my acknowledgment of condition I understand it will never be cured.</blockquote>

R: A doctor prescribed us.

B: That doctor's awesome.

S: The SGU–we were prescribed as therapy for anxiety because we are "you're escape to reality."

R: Can we say, "4 out of 5 doctors recommend"–

ML: Do not operate heavy machine while listening to the SGU.

J: Yeah. Are we a controlled substance?

S: Will we have to be regulated by the FDA?

R: Actually, Jon Ronson told me that he listens to us while he falls asleep every night.

(laughter)

R: And I said, "Should I take that as a compliment or–" he's like, "No. It's just very soothing. Makes me fall asleep.

B: Oh my god.

R: So, yes, do not listen while operating heavy machinery.

J: Could you imagine? That conversation took place somewhere. Two people somewhere were like, "I think you really need to start listening." Really? To us?

(laughter)

S: Well, that was certainly an unusual e-mail. The second one is along a similar line. This is from Kiera Neil from Melborne, Australia, and she writes,
<blockquote>I am almost 13 and this year my dad has been playing your podcasts in the car. I have loved the show as much as he has complaining when I miss something and not wanting to stop when have to wait for the next one. I just wanted to tell you guys that thanks to your podcast my 7th grade science marks have improved amazingly. Just this year I have gone from 72% in my first test to 96% in the last. All because of listening to the podcast. Also, the 5x5 episodes have helped me understand so much. Rebecca you are my idol and I hope to be like when I grow up.</blockquote>

B: Oh my god.

R: Awww.

<blockquote>Your's sincerely, Kiera the budding skeptic.</blockquote>

R: Thanks awesome.

E: Awesome.

R: That makes me feel like I have a lot more awesomeness to do this year to keep up with that.

S: That's right. So not only can you prescribe the SGU for anxiety it will also get you 24% better grades in science class.

R: Can we get that put on Starburst stickers that we can put on the website? Guaranteed to–

E: Well, we were called one of the 15 podcasts that made you smarter.

S: That's true.

R: And also, Health listens to us. Which, you guys are old and– 

S: Yes.

E: Yes.

R: sad and don't but it's awesome!

S: I know that. No, I know that. Although, they think that you're not funny.

(laughter)

R: He did not say–

E: He insulted our humor.

R: They said all of us in general are not funny. So–

S: Really? That's not what I–

R: So–

S: Memories are so flawed.

R: F*** you, Health, but also, you're awesome.

(laughter)

R: I love you.

S: I love you! Go to hell!

?: We like the moon.

R: Can I read one of my favorite e-mails?

S: Yes. Go ahead.

R: It just came the other day. It's from–

(laughter)

R: It's from a listener named Jim who writes,–

ML: Oh yes.

<blockquote>The interview about the LHC was unfortunately what one would expect from a high school student trying to get by without research. Circulating kittens is not possible since you have to use charged particles. It's all magnetic steering and acceleration. It is a very uniformed and dumb question to ask an expert. It's frankly bordering on the insulting.</blockquote>

R: So, I just wanted to thank Jim for writing in to correct us. It turns out it is not, in fact, possible, to circulate a kitten through the Large Hadron Collider. Thank you.

ML: Thank you, Jim.

S: You would think, Brian Cox, who actually operates it, would have known that.

R: Yeah. It's weird that he didn't.

E: He mistook it for the Large Kitten Collider.

R: Right. That's what I was about to say, that–

E: Which is a whole nother device all together.

R: scientists are working on that.

E: He's got to get his facts straight.

S: Yeah. The LKC. Yeah.

R: Right.

S: It's an easy mistake to make.

R: Located beneath Cutopia.

S: That's going to be our first real t-shirt. The LKC. The Large Kitten Collider.

(laughter)

R: Can someone please make an animation that just show what that might look like?

E: Oh please.

R: Cause, I'd pay good money for that.

== Science or Fiction Statistics (1:11:57) ==
S: Mike, I understand that you have compiled some science or fiction statistics for us.

ML: Yes I have.

R: Don't. Uh oh.

E: Oo.

ML: Jay.

R: Now, I would like to say–did you split them up into before Rebecca started recording the podcast at 2 AM–

S: Oh please.

R: and after Rebecca started recording the podcast at 2 AM?

ML: No.

R: I believe that has had a significant effect on my performance.

S: There was too little data for subgroup analysis, Rebecca, so I'm just going to have to go with the meta-analysis–

ML: That's right.

S: of the whole year.

R: Fine.

S: So go ahead, Mike.

R: Go on.

ML: So in 2009 the Science or Fiction stats are as follows. At the bottom is Jay.

J: What?

ML: Yes.

R: That was good. You almost sounded surprised.

ML: Jay–you can look at it half full–glass half empty glass–Jay answered 50% of the questions right.

J: I'm actually shocked cause it felt like I got everything wrong.

R: That's better than average.

ML: Nope. You got half. And then Evan got 56%. Rebecca got 64.3%–

R: Yeah!

ML: and Bob, at the top, is 76.5%–

J: Wow, Bob.

B: 76.

ML: and I got 100%.

J: Yeah. That's cause you're playing by yourself.

R: Good job, Mike.

E: Yeah, ya know.

R: You always win when you play with yourself.

E: That's like a batter getting one at bat in a baseball season.

ML: The longest winning streak was Bob with 9 wins. He did that twice.

E: Nein.

S: In honor of the movie 9.

ML: Yes.

B: Twice.

E: Nein.

ML: That's right, Bob, twice.

E: Oh, that's 18.

ML: The longest losing streak was Jay, with 4. He did that twice, too. And the number of times that everybody lost was 7. The number of times where everybody won was 12. And I started counting–I didn't start counting until about July or August but starting in July or August the number of times Steve was called a bastard was 14.

(laughter)

J: Awesome.

S: So just 14, huh?

ML: Just 14, yeah.

E: 13 by Bob.

J: Thanks Mike.

E: 1 by Rebecca.

R: Thank you for compiling those, Mike.

E: Preciate it, man.

R: But I'm pretty sure that if you just take into account the first of the year I'm beating Bob.

B: Whoa whoa whoa, I don't think so.

R: I'm pretty sure.

ML: I can do that right now. Let me see.

R: Really? On the fly?

S: Really? You can test Rebecca's claim that fast can you?

(laughter)

R: It's okay. I just PayPaled Mike $20.

(laughter)

R: (inaudible) gear, Mike. 

E: I'll just Google it.

ML: No, it's still Bob. Bob had 75%. Rebecca had 73%.

R: Am I closer.

ML: 73.

R: See.

S: Oh, very close. But, still Bob is beating you.

R: 73. I knew it.

E: Close, but no cigar.

R: I took a nose dive. It's 1 in the morning for god's sakes. How am I supposed to answer your crazy fiction science questions?

ML: And Jay's still sitting at 50.

J: 50. I mean what?

R: Aww.

S: Hey, you chose to move to London. You chose your husband over the show, so pay.

R: I did not choose–No.

E: That is true. Yeah.

R: I'd like to correct on this point because it turns out free will is an illusion, Steve.

S: So you didn't actually choose.

R: I did not choose. There is no "me" to choose.

S: The absence of free will is not incompatible with the notion of making choices.

R: Uh, it is, actually.

S: No, it isn't.

R: In this instance, because–

S: Because it serves your purposes.

R: Yes.

S: Okay.

R: Look, I would love to banter with you more, Steve, but it's 1 in the morning and I'm really tired, okay?

S: So, one other comment, do not e-mail us to tell us that this isn't the end of the decade.

R: Oh, god.

ML: Oh, jeez.

R: We don't want to hear it.

E: Or do and get it deleted.

R: I've already set up the filter in Gmail to just it right to trash.

E: Right.

S: We choose to end the decade this year. So that's it. And speaking of which that brings us to the end of our year and decade in review.

R: Oh. This was fun.

S: It was a lot of fun.

R: We should do this every week.

S: We should do this every year.

E: A lot–lot of fun. We should do this every decade.

== The SGU in 2010 (1:15:57) ==
S: I've been looking forward to the SGU in 2010. We got Nexus 2010 coming up April 1717, in New York. TAM8, DragonCon 2010, and then in November we're off to Australia.

R: Australia. Very exciting.

S: Which we are looking forward to.

R: And speaking of things that are happening this year, next Friday–Friday, January 8th, Richard Wiseman will be in Boston. Boston Skeptic's are hosting him at the Brattle Theatre. You can buy tickets on the Brattle Theatre's website or you can find out all the information at bostonskeptics.com.

S: Thanks to everyone for listening over the last year. Thanks to everyone who gave us a donation. We had a nice flurry of donations in the last couple of weeks. I guess people are making their pre-tax year donations.

R: We are still accepting them. FYI.

S: We are still accepting them.

E: Oh yeah.

S: But it helps keep the lights on and keeps the bandwidth going.

ML: It helps–

R: And thank you for the good rating on iTunes. Those are always lovely.

S: And for the podcast award. We appreciate that.

R: Oh yeah. We won a podcast award.

B: Oh yeah.

E: Oh yes. Our first major podcast award.

S: We are now an award winning podcast for the first time.

R: Did we get like a leg lamp or something for that?

B: A leg lamp.

S: We got a laurel and hearty handshake.

B: Hey Steve, I'd like to thank you for working your ass off again this year.

R: Yeah. Thank you, Steve.

J: Yeah.

S: Eh, you don't have to do that every year.

R: Once a year.

E: Steve, you're lazy. You're a lazy bum and you don't do anything.

B: We actually–we got an e-mail not too long ago where someone very explicitly was asking questions about how does Steve do it. How could he possibly get all that done. They think that there's some secret to it.

R: There's a quantum Steve from another dimension that jumped in and helped.

S: Right. And not the stoner, right.

ML: Well, you guys answered that two years ago{{link needed}}. Steve has a bunch of clones in the basement.

E: Dude.

S: Chained up, yeah.

B: Steve works a lot and plays very little. That's what it boils down to.

ML: Really? He's always on WarCraft. I'm always seeing–

B: Well, he's working while he's on there. It's hard work.

E: Exnay on the orcraftway.

== Conclusion (1:18:09) ==

S: Well, thanks to all of you guys for another year.

R: Thank you, Steve.

S: You guys put the hours in, as well.

ML: Thanks, Steve.

J: Our pleasure.

E: Well, thank you, Steve. It's been great.

S: And until next year and next decade, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

{{Outro119}}

== Today I Learned ==

== References ==
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SGU Episode 232

2016-07-26T17:30:15Z

Sunny256: Proofread down to just before "Skeptic of 2009", line 825 (35% completed)

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Friday, January 1st, 2010 and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella–

B: Hey everybody.

S: Rebecca Watson–

R: Hello everyone.

S: Jay Novella–

J: Hola.

S: Mike Lacelle–

ML: Hey everyone.

S: and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hey everyone.

R: Who's that Mike guy? What?

S: Mike is joining us for our year end wrap up episode which has become, now, customary.

R: Oh.

S: So, welcome Mike. Evan, you're going to give us a This Day in Skepticism?

E: Absolutely, because it was 1975 when Kenneth Rooker discovered the long unknown winter destination of the monarch butterfly in the mountains of Mexico. It was a mystery for a long time.

S: Yeah.

E: I guess they had no idea where the heck the monarch butterflies, all 20 million of these butterflies, would fly off to.

J: How'd he do it? What? Did he follow them?

E: Using tags on the wings of some of the butterflies he followed their migration trails to Mexican territories and he studied it for, well, was it 38 years of data?

S: And also last night was a blue moon.

B: Yes.

E: That's right.

R: And a lunar eclipse. A partial lunar eclipse.

S: Yes.

R: From my vantage point. Not from yours.

B: Really?

S: Yes. In Europe not in the US.

E: I know. Europe gets–I know.

S: So it doesn't really count.

E: This hemisphere gets cut out of a whole bunch of–

R: All the best stuff's over here, guys. I'm telling you.

J: Did you see it?

R: I did see it. I saw the tail end of it as I was stumbling down the street toward the next party.

E: Now, the moon, though, did not turn the color blue.

R: No.

E: As the name would suggest.

R: Blue moon only means that it's the second moon in a month.

S: Second full moon in a month, yeah.

R: Second full moon.

S: And that happens on New Years Eve about once every 19 years. Next one will be in 2029.

B: Is that when Apophis is going to hit the earth?

R: It's around then. Yeah. So we might not even see it. We'll all be dead.

B: It's not going to hit.

E: They refined that, Bob, there's much less chance that that asteroid is going to hit.

B: Yeah. Not in 2029 anyway.

E: Yeah, right.

R: Did you guys see the news of the Russians, though?

E: Yeah! They're going to launch–

R: They're going to blow it out of the sky.

S: Good for them.

E: They're going to launch something and land on that asteroid.

R: Yeah right. I'm a little, shall we say, skeptical, cause I read some interview with the spokesperson and he said that the asteroid was going to come around in something like 2026 or '27. He was very vague and I was just thinking you should really have all your facts straight when you arm your missiles.

S: Yeah, you've got to be kinda precise on that point.

J: Yeah, isn't it possible that they could do something to it and actually jockey it into a worse position?

B: Oh yeah.

E: That was my thought too, absolutely.

R: Yeah.

S: They could knock it into one of the keyholes. They absolutely can.

ML: They'd need to hire Bruce Willis for the job.

S: So this is the episode where we reminisce about the best moments over the last year.

B: And decade.

S: And the SGU–and decade–and also we're going–

E: Hehe, alright.

S: –to talk about some–

B: The millenium?

S: –the best and worst of science and skepticism in the last decade.

J: Wow.

== Listener Feedback (3:11) ==
S: But first let's go through our listener feedback as to their most outstanding SGU moments of 2009. There were a few votes for best episode. I think the one that got the most votes, though, was Rebecca's wedding.

E: Of course.

B: Yay.

R: Aww.

ML: Yeah.

R: Thank you. That was my favorite, I think.

E: Well, that was a hopefully once in a lifetime event.

B: You think?

S: I think the second one was the Nexus 2009 with Richard Wiseman as a guest.

E: That was so much fun.

R: Yeah.

J: Yeah, he was awesome on the show.

S: Two live events got the most votes.

R: We did more live events this year than any previous year because we did those, we did DragonCon... Well, I guess that's it, but that's still a lot.

S: Yeah.

(laughter)

E: TAM, DragonCon, (inaudible)

S: And much more!

E: We'll be doing all that plus Australia this year.

R: That's true.

S: Yeah. We'll have even more live events in 2010. That's true.

R: Soon we'll get to the point where we're just doing a live show every week. That'd be fun. (inaudible) exhausting.

E: The live events are great. Being there. The immediate feedback from the audience is, well, just something we don't typically, obviously, typically don't experience and it's always great.

S: Yeah. It's good. Honestly it's good for a once in a while thing. The downsides to the live events are that they're technically challenging and often a little bit out of our control. We're at the mercy of whatever venue we're at.

R: Yeah.

B: Yeah.

S: And we also don't control the questions, so while live questions are great we can't use them to set ourselves up to talk about topics we want to talk about.

E: That's true.

S: And they tend to be–live questions tend to be a little repetitive. I mean it's good ever now and then but it's obviously not going to become a regular thing.

R: But there's the hanging out with you guys thing. That's always fun.

S: Yeah. We love it.

E: That goes without saying. Yes.

J: It's definitely a lot more fun for me, as a panelist, to see you guys and have the face to face interaction, and–

R: Definitely, yeah.

J: Crazier stuff happens at the live events like Bob coming out in a costume.

B: Yeah, that was awesome.

J: Rebecca getting married.

S: Right. Right.

== Guests of 2009 (5:12) ==

S: We had a lot of great guests in 2009. We always do a good job of pulling in some interesting interviews. Those that got the most votes: one was Michael Vassar, if you remember him. He's the singularity guy. A lot of people just said, "that singularity guy!"

(laughter)

S: Because it was just a very, not only interesting interview, but it was a little contentious and I think people liked that. The next one was Rusty Schweickart–

B: Yeah.

S: –if you remember the Apollo astronaut.

B: That was great.

S: That was, I think, my most surprising interview of the year. Phil Plait hooked us up with Rusty and it's one that I didn't see coming until Phil say, "Hey, I can get you this guy." And it turned out to be a really interesting interview. Just talking with him about his first hand experience with going up in Apollo was fascinating.

B: Yeah. That rocket door.  That's something you never ever read about. Never hear about. Just those subtle little things that only someone really on the rocket would experience and know. It's just fascinating stuff.

S: Yeah. One e-mailer said that he's been a real Apollo fan for years and thought he knew everything there was to know about that launch and yet he still learned new tidbits from Rusty on that interview.

B: Cool.

J: Yeah there was a couple of things that he said like how much the rocket compresses during liftoff, but when they turn those booster off and the whole rocket snaps back to it's original size, which, I think, it's a few inches that it crunched down, and it lurched them forward and his head almost hit the freaking control panel.

S: Yeah. Cause the loosened their straps. They shouldn't oughta had done that.

B: That's it.

B: It's hard to plan and expect that. In the simulation.

S: Yeah. That brings up that point that here you have a multi-million dollar program, how many engineers and just really people involved in thinking through every little tiny little detail and yet you can't anticipate things like the astronauts loosening their shoulder straps so they can move around a little bit more and then almost cracking their head open on the control panel. I mean, they couldn't anticipate that. There's no substitute for experience is the bottom line.

J: Yeah. And just talking to someone who actually went through that. I mean, not only is the guy an icon in history but he did it. He was there. He strapped himself into that thing and did that unbelievable, awesome, science thing that when I was a kid and I read about it and saw videos about it, that got me interested in science.

S: Any other interviews stand out in your guys' minds?

R: I think Tim Minchin got a number of votes on the year end wrap up thread.

S: Yeah.

R: And for good reason. Tim is always incredibly entertaining–

E: Absolutely.

R: –and such a wonderful performer. So he's a lot of fun to interview.

ML: Michio Kaku was awesome.

B: That was a great get. Yeah.

S: Yeah. Michio Kaku got a lot–

ML: Really interesting stuff.

S: Ken Miller, it was a great interview as well and got a lot of votes.

B: Yeah.

S: Ken Miller is an evolutionary biologist who deals a lot with Creationism and just, again, one of the most knowledgeable and thoughtful people, I think, on that topic. And Mark Crislip got a lot of mention as well. He's a recurring guest on our show. Did the H1N1 special with us and also has his own podcast, Quackcast, so he has a lot of experience behind the microphone. Mark is always fun to talk to.

ML: Award winning podcast.

J: Yeah. And his show is fantastic. I always learn something when I listen to his show. Actually, I learn a lot. He pile drives detail into his show like crazy. But man, his sense of humor just gets me. Like the whole time I'm listening to him I'm half laughing, you know?

E: Interview Brian Brushwood was great, as well, because who knew that later that year we'd be eating fire with him?

S: That's right.

E: On the campus of Yale.

S: There may be a video appearing on Youtube sometime soon of us eating fire with Brian Brushwood.

J: Yeah, he's a great guy.

S: Well there are many great interviews this year but those are the ones that got specifically mentioned by our listeners.

== SGU's Funniest Moment (9:24) ==

S: The next category was the SGU's funniest moment for 2009 so before I start listing what our listeners said, do you guys have any that stick out in your mind.

ML: There's some funny conversation between Rebecca and Steve about birds. Early on in the year.

S: Can you be more specific?

ML: It was about bird jizz or something like that.

R: Was that he jizz one?

S: You mean when we were talking about bird jizz? Yeah.

ML: Yeah. You remember that time, you were talking about birds? That time.

R: I do remember discussing jizz.

S: A lot of people liked when we were talking about vomix and pasketti and mamatos.

R: And mamatos.

(laughter)

S: Some people liked Rebecca's line. Rebecca's good for the one liners. She said, "I can't believe the chronic doesn't cure the chronic."

R: I was pretty proud of that one too, actually.

S: The Cluckasaurus rex discussion was good.

J: That was good, Ev.

E: Yeah. That was good.

== Best Science News Story of 2009 (10:17) ==
S: Best science news story of the year. This is an interesting one. What do you guys think?

B: The few that I liked–one of them was Ardipithecus ramidus. That was a tour de force of research and work that these scientists did over many years to put it all together before the submitted it which is what they did this year, which is basically an early stage of human evolution. It's older than Lucy. That was a tour de force, I think. That was a very intersting–the biggest surprise for me was the whole magnetic monopoles that supposedly found.

R: The monopoles, yeah.

B: That was–I remember when, Evan, you told me that, we were down at DragonCon you mentioned it–

E: That's right.

B: And I was like, "What? No way!" I just refused to believe it until I read about it. So that was–

R: That was when we were all at the Hibachi place or whatever.

B: Yeah. Right.

S: Yeah.

B: So, that was a big one for me.

S: That was definitely the most surprising headline I saw.

B: Yeah.

S: You know, "magnetic monopole?" That can't be.

B: What? Just a bare, positive or–I mean a North or South? What are you talking about? But yeah, it looks like they did. I haven't read much more about it but I think that they're still going with that interpretation. And then water on the moon. That was big. Big story. God, how many news items were made of that? That was really–a really cool thing that was finally proven.

S: Yeah. It's nice that there's water there if we ever do set up a base it'll certainly make it a lot more feasible–

B: Right.

S: to have some raw material there that's very useful. Bob, what's really interesting to me–the Ardipithicus got a lot of votes–a lot of magazines' top 10 lists. The one I didn't see was Ida or Darwinius masillae.

R: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

R: I was going to bring that up on worst science news.

S: Yeah. That was the biggest–the science was fine, but the media flap was a flop. I mean it was terrible.

E: Media flop.

S: They–this is the scientists they tried to be media savvy and they did a documentary and a website and a book and the hype that they put behind–it's basically a primate fossil. The specimen is lovely, I mean it's a very well preserved specimen.

B: Yeah. Beautiful.

S: And it is from a period of time potentially connecting two branches of primates. One leading to prosimians, like lemurs, and the other leading to monkeys, apes, and the group that also includes humans, but they tried to make it seem like this had special significance for humans, and it didn't. It was really–No one really bought that. It just seemed odd. And they also were making really ridiculous statements like "this is going to hit the scientific community like an asteroid." And they over sold it so much that it was just [sad trombone]. Nothing.

B: Yeah.

S: And now at the end of the year nobody even remembers it. So–

E: Apparently, I–

S: it's not even making anybody's list.

B: I forgot about it. If you didn't mention it I wouldn't have thought.

S: Yeah. Total fail.

B: Yeah.

S: It was a total science media fail.

B: Failure.

B: And you remember some of those articles written about it were really bad.

S: Yeah, yeah. Just terrible. I definitely like the water on the moon, Bob, and I would have to add to that methane on Mars.

B: Yep.

S: That's still in contention that that that could be from life.

E: Absolutely.

S: Sounds like they've ruled out meteors. There's no geological process that we know of that could explain it so it's something unknown or maybe it's little Martian critters.

J: Yeah. Bottom line if that's bacteria producing it that's the biggest news story of the century.

S: Yeah. Millennium in my opinion.

B: Yeah. Maybe next year.

E: Life one another planet. I mean that–psh–forget it.

S: Non-Earth life–that's huge. Huge.

R: Yeah. That would win.

E: And it was the year of H1N1, too. There was so much going on with the flu and the–you know–swine flu–so much press on it.

S: Yeah. And it's–

E: It's kind of passed us by right now but if you remember the summer months–

B: It was big.

E: every other headline was about H1N1.

S: Yeah. And the flu is still chugging along. I mean, we're still right in the midst of it. There is a lot of scare mongering about the vaccine. It made Discover's #1 science story of 2009 was the fear mongering surrounding vaccines and they got the story right, so good for them.

E: Yeah.

S: And here we are, you know, several months into the vaccination program and nothing. There's like no extra cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, there's no–really nothing rising above background level for any side effects so it's turned out, thank goodness, to be completely safe.

E: So you're saying the media hyped it? What?

S: It wasn't so much–it was definitely partly the media but the anti-vaccination movement really went full bore and also just a lot of alternative medicine groups and anyone who has a beef with science based medicine or vaccines particular used the H1N1 swine flu vaccine as a scare tactic and nothing. It turned out that, as we predicted, it's a safe vaccine. It's known technology. We'll monitor it closely but we don't expect any surprises and it turned out to be totally fine.

E: Yep.

S: I also think we should mention this was the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landings on the moon.

E: Oh. Good point.

S: And one of the coolest things to come out of that was–actually not directly tied to the anniversary but one of the coolest Apollo related stories was the LRO taking pictures of the lunar landing sites–the Apollo landing sites–

E: Yeah.

S: Including the footpaths of the astronauts shuffling through the regolith.

E: Part of the greater conspiracy.

S: Yeah.

(laughter)

R: There were a lot of great photos that came out this year. Especially more wonderful photo's of Cassini. Like the things that Carolyn Porco always shows in her talks. I think we talked about some of the pictures.

S: And we have to mention the Large Hadron Collider went online this year.

B: Back online. Yes.

R: We didn't die.

S: Back on. But it actually started smashing stuff.

J: And did break records. It's now the most–

ML: (inaudible)

J: the most energetic.

S: It is the most energetic collider in the world. Yep.

J: Yeah. Absolutely not an insignificant thing happening. That is the most expensive and complicated machine that humans have ever built, right?

S: Yes.

E: Absolutely. And number of black holes created by the Large Hadron Collider?

S, J, M, B: Zero.

R: So far.

ML: And Steve, you said it was the 40th anniversary of the Apollo moon landings, it was also the 40th anniversary of the Internet–

S: Oh, is that right?

ML: in 2009. Yes. The first 4 node network was made by ARPA–yeah, ARPANET is what is was called back then in December of 1969.

R: Which is related to the LHC, actually. I mean, it's the same people, isn't it?

B: Right. CERN, yeah.

S: Yeah. Yeah.

R: Yeah.

S: Some other ones that got mentioned was crocoduck.

R: Crocoduck is a good one.

E: Quacksnap.

S: The quacksnap, yep. The holographic universe.

J: That still totally freaks me out.

B: They like that one, huh?

S: Yeah.

R: Oh, yeah.

B: That was freaky.

S: Yeah. It's essentially like our universe–you can make an analogy between the way our universe is structured and a hologram meaning that it's just a–there's a graininess to our universe which is due to the fact that it's really a picture on–as if it were a picture on the surface of a sphere. I guess it's on a 4-dimensional–the surface of a 4-dimensional sphere. So it's kind of like a hologram. It's hard to do it justice without spending another 20 minutes talking about it but go back and listen to that episode{{link needed}}.

B: Yeah. That's it in a nutshell.

R: Basically, we're all living inside a snow globe.

S: Right.

E: Oh no. Ah! They're shaking it again! Ah! Hey, we were talking about 40th anniversary stuff. Other numbers or years of significance that occurred–150 years, Origin of Species–

S: That's right.

E: 200 years, Darwin's birthday.

B: Yeah.

E: 400 years, Galileo's telescope.

S: Very nice.

B: I'll throw another one in there 50 year anniversary of physicist Richard Feynman's very famous lecture, There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom that he gave at the American Physical Society at Caltech where he basically laid out the potential of nanotechnology, essentially. Really laid it out there, as far as I could tell, for the very first time. Anniversary of note, I think.

== Most Outrageous Illogical Statement or Pseudo-Scientific Claim of 2009 (18:37) ==
S: Let's go now to the other side–the flip side the most outrageous illogical statement or pseudo-scientific claim of the year. A lot of people voted for the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0c5yClip4o YouTube video on how homeopathy works]. Do you guys remember that one?

R: Yes.

B: That was awesome.

?: Loved it.

S: That totally incomprehensible nonsense about trying to explain homeopathy. It was really just amazing. The thing that always gets me is that you could take mass out of E=mc2 cause there's not that much mass in the universe so you can just eliminate it from the equation.

B: Yeah. That was good.

ML: They get an 'A' for effort.

B: Wow.

R: It's one of those things where it's delivered by someone who says something like that and then smiles and nods and then everyone in the audience just smiles and nods. "Yeah. Of course. You can do that. Yeah."

S: Oh, we didn't actually see the audience in that YouTube video.

J: You know, Steve, you don't have to–

S: You can imagine what the audience was doing but it's irrelevant. The thing is it was trying to make sense–

R: It's the assumed authority by the person who's speaking such completely and utter BS.

S: Right. Yeah. She projects that she should be having some authority, and she's spoke like a teacher talking to 5 year olds, too.

R: Right.

S: Which made it all the more entertaining as a skeptic.

B: A teacher who mispronounced people's names.

S: Yes.

B: Hawkings.

S: Hawkings. We–it's wonderful when homeopaths or pseudo-scientists do a better job than we can of making their belief systems seem ridiculous. I mean, we don't have to do anything else except point to that.

R: I think, one of my favorite news stories that–maybe it's true, maybe it's not pseudo-science, but the LHC reaching back in time to stop itself from happening.

S: Yeah, right.

ML: Yes.

R: I loved that story.

B: Yeah. That was fun.

R: Really? There's nothing you could say to that.

J: You so don't know if those scientists–we don't know if they were actually doing it as a thought experiment or if they were serious, right?

S: Yeah.

B: Well, I think they were serious, absolutely.

S: I think that was definitely the most bizarre thing to come out of a serious science paper.

B: Steve, could we go over some of the best Xbox360–

ML: Yes, let's do it.

J: Yeah. Let's do that.

E: Oh, wait wait. I have a quote for you. I want to see if you know who said this, in 2009. "They took this beautiful man and they basically put poison into him. Why couldn't they have built him up nutritionally and gotten rid of the toxins in his body? We have an epidemic going on and I have to say–"

J: Suzanne Somers.

E: Yay.

S: About Patrick Swayze.

E: Yes. About Patrick Swayze.

ML: Oh, god.

R: Defiling the memory of Patrick Swayze.

ML: Most outrageous statement, "Steve eats babies."

S: Yeah, the whole–the anti-vaccine movement deserves a big–you know–mention. They get my vote–I don't want to get ahead of ourselves but they're the skeptical–

B: Too late.

S: –jackass of the year collectively, and that certainly is part of why. But go back to the science stories the one that got a mention for ridiculous claims was when the study came out showing that essentially fake acupuncture was no different than quote/unquote "real" acupuncture and the scientists concluded that "therefore fake acupuncture must work too." Let's just turn the entire premise of scientific medicine on its head just for this one study.

J: OK, when you just said that, Steve, I had about a 3 second rage fire through me, you know? I just need to do something violent about that, right now.

R: I'm so glad I'm not in the same room with you.

J: Let's talk about something good. How about they found water on the moon.

S: It's true. They did. But don't forget–

J: That's fantastic.

S: –don't forget, quantum jumping! That was a good discussion.

(laughter)

R: Quantum jumping. That was a great one. That was where–

B: That was good.

R: –we went on a long rant about going to different dimensions, right?

S: To learn skills from other versions of yourself.

R: Yes.

E: Yeah.

R: Yeah.

J: Rebecca, you said something about how you could pay for it by loving yourself.

(laughter)

R: Which you know you would do.

S: Another item that got some votes was the claim that Thomas Jefferson was a creationist before the Origin of Species was published.

R: Oh, right.

S: Before evolutionary theory was presented. Yeah, that's meaningful.

E: Yeah.
== Jackass of 2009 (23:02) ==
S: Well, let's move on to the jackass of the year. We already mentioned the anti-vaccinationists so J.B. Handley I think has to stand in for that crew. I think he was the person who was most pushing that forward this year and the baby eating picture was just the most disgusting thing that they did. But just their increasing efforts to work tirelessly against vaccines as a science based health care intervention and just the tactics they use are absolutely horrendous, so they get my vote. They get my vote. I agree with Discover Magazine.

R: I think I would throw in with the BCA, the British Chiropractic Association, since I'm representing from jolly old England and just–you know–if any listeners have been asleep for the past year they're the people who are suing Simon Singh for libel.

S: Right.

R: For saying that their treatments are bogus. Which they are. So, I suppose I'll be sued now, too. Anyway, douchbags. Jackasses.

J: I kinda see Susanne Somers and Jenny McCarthy just kind of hovering around each other.

S: Yeah.

E: You gotta throw Oprah in there, I think, to that coven of witches, too.

S: Yeah. I think Oprah really won last year. I don't know that–she's kinda been coasting this year. Did she really do anything new? I mean she did Jenny McCarthy her own show.

E: She gave McCarthy the show. Yeah.

ML: Right.

R: Yeah.

B: That's pretty bad.

R: And she's retiring to, probably, only–she's retiring her show, I should say, to only rise up in a douchier way later, I'm sure.

S: Right.

R: But–

S: Not her media empire.

R: Right.

S: Jay, if you're going to mention Susanne Somers I think we have to also give honorable mention to other cancer quacks. Gonzales, whose treatment for pancreatic cancer this year was shown to be much worse than standard therapy. In fact, it was as bad, if not worse, than no treatment at all, and yet he continues to push it. And Hulda Clark who finally died this year.

E: Halllda.

S: It's an in memoriam.

J: Yep. Definitely.

R: And, how about the guy who treated the H1N1 cheerleader?

S: Oh, yes. But that gets all wrapped up–

R: Desiree Jennings.

S: Yeah. Desiree Jennings. It gets wrapped up in the anti-vax stuff. That was the other really nasty thing this year. The exploitation of that poor girl, Desiree Jennings. And that was Buttar.

R: Buttar, yeah.

S: The guy who treated her with chelation therapy. Totally disgusting.

E: That was bad.

ML: What about the pope?

R: The pope for–condoms

ML: For his comments on condoms and AIDS his recent rant about women.

E: Everything. This is one of the worst Popes in a long, long time.

R: He's a pretty bad Pope.

S: Worst Pope of the year.

ML: Palpatine.

(laughter)

J: I need more Popes.

E: I'm going to throw an honorable mention to Charlie Sheen. Charlie.

S: Oh, Charlie.

E: Who led the raves of the 9/11 deniers this year.

S: Yeah, but it was the death throes of the 9/11 denial–the Truther movement, right?

B: The death rattle.

S: The death rattle. They're pretty much done.

E: But he gets the honorable mention, also, because he was arrested for allegedly wielding a knife against his girlfriend.

R: That's true.

E: So, what we have here is a knife wielding 9/11 denier–

R: Allegedly.

E: I think when you put that combination together that is by definition a menace to society and therefor deserves mention.

S: Evan, you're poisoning the well, with the whole knife wielding–

(laughter)

R: No no. This needs to be said.

E: I said "allegedly."

R: It needs to be said, though. It happened. It's in the news.

E: It's true.

S: Alright. What about Bill Maher?

J: Yeah.

R: Yeah. Yeah. He's big news but only–the funny thing, though–Okay, so he was a jackass, yes, because of his denying any form of science based medicine but it's not through anything that he did specifically this year. It's only because of what that foundation did to give him a prize for it and I think they're the jackasses.

S: He got the–giving Maher the Richard Dawkins reward.

R: Yes.

S: Yeah. They definitely go on the list.

R: I think that they're jackasses for promoting such an anti-science jackass.

E: And they took a lot of heat for that.

J: Yeah. I agree with Rebecca.

B: But as long as he's an atheist.

S: Right.

R: Right. Even though he's not and has specifically said, "I'm not an atheist."

S: Yeah.

R: I mean they pretty much failed on every level there.
== Skeptic of 2009 (27:34) ==
S: Well, the final category that we put to our listeners was the skeptic of the year and the person who got the most votes was Phil Plait and we brought and we brought Phil on to chat with us for a few minutes about that and to let him know that he won. But before we got to that interview lets go through the honorable mentions. Other people who were also mentioned by listeners as skeptic of the year. Richard Wiseman got mention, as did Richard Dawkins and P.Z.–

B: Simon Singh.

ML: Simon Singh, yeah.

S: Simon Singh

B: Simon Singe.

R: Simon Singe?

S: Simon Singh for–

B: I can't help it. I always say that when I say his name. I love that. It's like a super hero name. Simon Singe.

(laughter)

S: And he has some kind of fire based super power.

B: Of course.

S: Simon Singe. That's actually pretty good.

ML: It's not water based, Steve.

R: That's why homeopathy–I can imagine there's a homeopathy–

B: Yeah. He fights homeopathy with fire power.

R: villain. Sprays them with water.

(laughter)

B: He's also know in smaller circles as The Evaporator.

(laughter)

E: Very small circles.

S: And Amy Wallace of Wired Magazine was mentioned, as well, for her article on the anti-vaccine movement. Always nice to get a good, solid, mainstream journalist–journalism–

B: Yeah.

R: Yeah, she was fantastic.

S: getting the science right.

R: Although, I think that–I probably gave it to Simon last year, too, but, I think I would have gone with him again this year because–

E: Nothing wrong with that.

R: he's just so boldly leading the fight against the chiropractors as well as the entire British libel law problem. It's really impressive.

S: Definitely deserves props.

E: He's suffered the most arrows.

B: Yeah.

S: And some mentioned the crew over at Science Based Medicine. So I have to mention my colleagues over there–

J: Yeah.

E: Here here.

ML: Yep.

S: who are, trust me, they are working hard with forming the Institute for Science and Medicine, this year. They're now doing double time service, running Science Based Medicine and now ISM. Really, they've been incredibly hard working this year.
== Interview with Phil Plait (29:39) ==
S: So, let's bring Phil Plait on to chat about a few things. Phil, welcome to the Skeptics' Guide.

PP: Hey. How's it going guys?

B: Good, Phil.

S: It's always a pleasure to have you on and we wanted to chat you for our year-end wrap up show. Now we have a done a very informal survey of our listeners through the forums. So, it was somewhat selective–self selective sample of our listeners and we asked them to vote for a number of things including the skeptic of the year and guess who got the most votes.

PP: Uhh... Jenny McCarthy.

S: She was very close.

PP: Meryl Dorey. Who else is there?

S: Actually, Jenny McCarthy was in the running for jackass of the year.

PP: Really?

S: That's right.

E: She got plenty of votes.

PP: (laughter)

S: But, absolutely yeah. She's starting to become a favorite. But Phil Plait, #1 votes for skeptic of the year from our listeners.

PP: You're kidding. Really?

S: Yeah.

PP: What were they thinking?

S: Really.

PP: Was this before or after I announced I was leaving the JREF?

S: It was in the last couple weeks, so–. And also you got a lot of votes for favorite interview of the year but you had more opportunities than most other guests.

PP: (laughter) That's not fair. I've been on more than Rebecca has recently.

S: Somebody calculated you've been on 5.1% of episodes.

PP: Is that by time or by word usage or by Star Trek references?

E: By Stardate.

S: Yeah. Star Trek reference I think would be much higher than that. So congratulations. There's no trophy or anything. It's just–

PP: Well, I'd like to thank all the little people.

S: You get to come on our show and chat with us.

E: Yay!

PP: Yeah. That's really very cool. I'm surprised and grateful and [insert cliche here]. 

S: Yeah.

PP: That's really cool.

S: Well, seriously, you are one of the work horses of the skeptical movement. You're ubiquitous, right? You do a lot of things.

PP: Well, that just goes to show you how disorganized and sad the skeptic movement is.

(laughter)

PP: I'm not even wearing pants right now and so I think–well, I'm wearing sweat pants I guess that counts, sort of. Just means we have to have more professionals getting involved. That's why D.J. Grothe's going to be running the JREF now. He's actually a little bit more professional than I am.

E: And he has a tailor.

PP: True. His beard is far more neatly trimmed than mine is.

B: But Phil, it's really true that you're amazingly accessible. When I listen back to the shows and whenever we have you on we all laugh a lot more, there's a lot more energy when we talk to you because you push it up a notch.

PP: I can here that in your voice, so–

(laughter)

PP: No. Seriously, that's–it's terrific. That's really wonderful. Now if all those people would actually buy my book that would be even better.

S: Let's not get crazy. So, Death from the Skies, is that out in paperback yet?

PP: Yeah. Yeah. It's got the creepy comic book cover and everything.

J: Phil actually had a version of it printed on one big toilet paper roll so you could just slowly read it when you're in the john.

PP: Read it one page at a time. That'd be great.

S: That's where I read it anyway.

R: That's actually a good idea, guys.

S: Toilet paper books.

PP: I'm just thinking this through.

S: You have to read far enough ahead depending on how much you need to use.

PP: In fact, in fact, if you're going to write a murder mystery where the mystery is resolved on the last page, that's a great way to make sure people don't go to the last page and read it first, because you can't really get to it without making a huge mess.

J: Yeah.

B: That is a good idea cause I think your friends would buy it, and your enemies.

PP: True.

B: Cause your enemies would just really get into it.

PP: And they'd have to buy it in a 9 pack so it would really–you'd really boost sales that way, too.

E: Yeah, but it's super absorbent, so–

PP: You could see a wall of your books at Target.

S: But then–the thing is you couldn't share a bathroom with somebody because you miss the segments when they were using it.

PP: In fact, in fact, this–

B: His and hers toilet paper.

PP: this would prevent piracy.

E: That is true.

PP: Nobody's going to steal it and it's your own personal download.

(laughter)

PP: Thank you. Thank you.

E: I love toilet humor.

PP: And you can hear everybody on the SGU forums changing their vote right now.

(laughter)

E: Click click click-click.

S: So, Phil, what are your plans for next year?

PP: Blogging. Secret stuff I can't talk about yet.

S: Just, more of the same plus the secret stuff you can't talk about.

PP: Well, less of some things but more–it'll be writing the blog I've got–I've got some other writing things I'd like to do. I've been tossing around some ideas for a long time and it just depends how much time I have. I just wrote a couple of articles for the print version of Discover Magazine. They come out with a special issue every few months. This one's called Extreme Universe! and they asked me to write short blurbs about my favorite bad and good science and science fiction movies, so, that's available on newsstands everywhere. So you can pick that up. But I'd like to more for that. I've been wanting to write for the print version of the magazine for a long time so we finally got around to doing that Testing that out. I really enjoy writing. I haven't gotten tired of it yet, which surprises me because of I get tired of almost everything after a short period of time. I'm still really enjoying sitting down and just talking about this stuff. So I'm hoping to do more.

S: Phil, let me put you on the spot and ask you a couple quick questions.

PP: Okay.

S: Biggest astronomy news item of 2009.

PP: Water on the moon.

S: Okay. What about methane on Mars?

E: Close second?

PP: The methane on Mars is still too much of mystery and not well understood.

S: Okay. Fair enough.

PP: For me to be–It's big news, it's very interesting, but we don't know how big it is as opposed to water on the moon which actually is extremely interesting.

S: Yeah. We know exactly what the utility of that is.

PP: Yes.

B: Right.

S: Yeah. Phil, biggest astronomy news item of the decade.

J: Ooo.

PP: Oh, I don't know. That's too hard.

S: Okay.

PP: Now we had basically kind of sort of direct evidence for dark matter in the Bullet Cluster observations.

S: Yeah.

PP: This cluster–the two different clusters of galaxies slammed into each other and you can measure directly where the gas is, you expect in a head on collision between two clusters the gas in the clusters would slam into each other and stop dead like two cars on the highway moving at opposite–head on at 60 mph they kind of stop. The stars pass through each other the gas stops, but the dark matter, theoretically should just keep going and when you measure the effects of dark matter through it's gravity that's exactly what they found.

S: Right.

PP: So, it's a statistical observation in that you can't point and say that's where the dark matter is, kinda sorta. It's more like–it's like predicting how many times you're going to flip a coin heads if you flip it 100 times. It's about 50. And so you can statistically say the same thing about dark matter. Where do you expect to see it? By measuring it's effects on the light coming from background galaxies which gets affected as it passes through the dark matter. And when you do that you say, "Oh look. The dark matter's moved on," and so you can just clearly see that the dark matter exists. And if that makes no sense I'm actually waving my hands. If you could see me the hand waving makes it all very clear. But you can look up "Bullet Cluster" on the web and you'll find things about that.

S: Yeah. Phil, one more question. We're talking about the big winners and losers over the last decade in terms of not whose right or wrong, but who has advanced their agenda. Now I'll just get your opinion about one thing. Moon hoaxers. Do you think the last decade was good for them or bad for them?

PP: Well, 2001 is when the Fox TV show came out. The conspiracy theory. Did we land on the moon? And so that was a huge boost for them. There have been–it's been mentioned in a couple of movies and it's kind of gotten into the popular culture. However, I think most people understand that the real promulgators of this conspiracy theory are lunatics and so it's–on the other hand they've gained a lot of ground with kids who are young and don't know how to parse a logical argument very well.

S: Do you think the Mythbusters special on the moon hoax took a chunk out of them?

PP: I have no idea. It's so hard to measure these sorts of things. If you measure it by number of YouTube commenters, which is of course the gold standard of how things work, certainly there are a lot of these guys out there. There are a couple of them out there that call me names that always crack me up. It probably infuriates them that I ignore them, so, that makes me happy. I think they're probably gaining ground in younger kids but that's the kind of thing that people tend to grow out of. So, I really don't think 5 years from now somebody who's 12 years old and thinks the Apollo landings are fake when they're 17 I think they're going to look back and think, "Oh, what was I thinking."

S: Yeah.

PP: So, there you go.

S: Well Phil, it's always awesome to have you on the show.

PP: Ah, it's been great. Happy New Year.

S: Yes. Happy New Year. Looking forward to another banner year of skepticism.

PP: Yay.

B: Phil, you're awesome.

PP: True.

(laughter)

PP: No. You guys are. And I'm pointing right at the little avatars of you on Skype right now.

B: Aw, thanks Phil.

E: Avatar. Seen that movie.

PP: Oh, god. No. No!

E: It's Avatar.

PP: Don't make me talk about that.

S: Alright. Goodnight Phil.

J: See ya next year, Phil.

E: Goodnight Phil.

PP: Talk to you later.

== 2000 to 2010 in Skepticism (39:15) ==
S: Well, I thought we turn from 2009 to the last decade and talk about–what I want to do is I want to throw out to you guys some big topics that skeptics deal with and then we're going to chat about whether or not we thought over the last decade they were winners or losers.

B: Okay.

S: Okay?

R: Okay.

=== Creationism/Intelligent Design (39:39) ===
S: So, I'll give you an easy one to start out with. For example, the whole Creationism/Intelligent Design movement. What kind of a decade did they have?

R: They lost so much.

J: Lost.

B: Big time. Dover was one–

E: Dover crushed them.

B: Dover. Huge huge epic fail on their part.

E: It didn't destroy them. You can't destroy these unsinkable ducks, but, I mean that Dover case was a nice, nice victory for science and skepticism.

R: Right. And speaking of that and just to reach slightly back to the skeptic of the year I think Eugenie Scott deserves a mention for continuing that fight in Texas this year with the Texas State Board of Ed fight to include–to keep science in the textbooks.

S: Yeah. Well, she's on the short list for skeptic of the decade. Even though we didn't ask for that category. I definitely think she's someone who over the last 10 years has consistently fought for science in that arena. And she's gotten–definitely this year, though, we should mention, she was given a couple of really significant awards. Recognitions of her work. She was honored by the California Academy of Sciences in October and she won the Gould prize by Scientific American. So–

E: That could have gone to so many people.

S: The Steve J. Gould prize. Yep. So, she definitely deserves mention. What about–so I agree that in general the Creationism/Intelligent Design movement, they're intellectually bankrupt, they're really desperately flailing around for a strategy. They got hit hard at Dover. There new strategy in the last decade has been the academic freedom angle.

J: Yeah. Expelled.

S: Which I don't–Yeah, I don't think–Expelled, I think was a failure.

E: I think so, too.

S: Yeah. It doesn't have that much legs but they did make some mischief in Texas if you recall–

E: Textbooks.

S: this past year with the textbooks. So with the science textbooks standards.

E: Kansas. Georgia. Every couple–yeah, every year or two it's a new state. They move around they test different waters but thankfully they continue to largely fail.

J: I don't know if I totally agree with you guys. I mean, I think, just the fact that they were even considered in what they were basically trying to do. I mean, they caused a lot of trouble.

R: Yeah, but in every major battle they have lost.

S: If we think about it this way, where were they 10 years ago and where are they now? Have they really advanced their cause. I don't think have. I think they've basically lost the last decade. Not that they're–you're right Jay we vigilance. They're causing mischief. They are continually–they have resources and they're looking for new strategies all the time, but I don't think they've advanced their cause. Certainly the science has relentlessly gone against them. They haven't really come up with anything new or interesting to say.

J: What about that creation museum in Kentucky? They came up with that. 

S: Yeah. It's basically. It's a laughing stock. They're doing a good job catering to their core. Which is easy. That doesn't advance you're movement. They're just now stroking their core. That's basically all their doing.

R: Let's as Kent Hovind if he thinks the decade was a good one or a bad one.

(laughter)

R: Oh, wait. We can't, because he's in jail.

E: Kent Hovind, also know as 655321.

?: (inaudible) 321

=== Ufology (43:03) ===
S: Okay. What about Ufology?

B: I think they didn't make hardly any ground. I put them in the loser category for this past 10 years.

J: Yeah, me too.

B: First off, digital technology really hurt them because everybody's got a camera these days and still it's the same old crappy video and images. There's no real in your face, "Holy crap look at that" type of thing–

S: Yeah.

B: which is what you'd expect with so many camcorders and cameras all over the place. And, Steve, you made a good point in your blog about it that they didn't come up with any new twists this decade. The kidnappings or abductions or–

S: Yeah. Previous decades they've added alien abductions or alien implants or something. There was really nothing new that I could think of.

B: Yeah.

S: No new twist on the mythology. They didn't really advance the mythology at all.

R: Well, and to build on Bob's point about digital technology hurting them I think it also hurts them in another way. Not just that there's a lack of evidence considering that everyone's walking around with a camera, but also, everyone's walking around with a camera and they actually are taking photos and things of odd phenomena–

E: Smoke rings–

R: such as–or like the mysterious swirls over Russia–

E: Right.

R: or whatever it was.

S: Norway.

R: Norway.

S: Norway spirals, yeah.

R: Right. So a lot of people got that on film and so people were able to look at it, examine it, and then explain it. Missiles and whatnot. So, I think it hurts them, too, because it's easier than ever to investigate these things.

B: And another wrinkle on that is the appreciation I think of easy it is to fake any of that. People look at it and their first thought is gotta be, "Alright. Now that could have been faked using whatever." Photoshop or other digital technology to make it look convincing but still be very fake.

S: Know what's the funny? The half a dozen or so times I've blogged about this issue and say essentially there's no smoking gun evidence of alien spacecraft, there's not good videos, no good photographs–

J: Yeah.

S: Invariably somebody shows up in the comments and say, "No good videos? You're just not looking hard enough. Look at this." And then link to some total crappy video. It's just happened today–

J: Just today.

S: we were linked to a video of this blurry blob dangling from a string. I mean, really?

(laughter)

S: We have a different definition of compelling evidence.

E: Plan 9 from outer space.

J: But look at this. This is the best we have.

ML: Or that video of the alien in the window.

E: How much is the alien in the window?

B: Oh my god. Remember that?

S: That was this year. We need to mention that, as well. That guy now is pushing forward this–the proposal to get–

B: The committee, yeah.

S: Denver to spend money on a committee for alien relations.

E: Denver. Oh, what a waste.
=== ESP Research (45:54) ===
S: Alright, next topic. ESP research.

B: Nowhere. They got nothing.

S: I think you've got to put them in the loser column, too, this year, because essentially, again, no new paradigm of research and they've basically admitted that, "Yeah, the results are not reproducible and we have nothing." That's like the big conclusion of all the research that's been done. They really–they don't have anything.

E: All margin error, within the noise levels.

S: Yeah.

E: That's where all activity takes place.

S: They came up with the notion of the decline effect. The decline effect means that the better the research you do the effect size declines. Until it disappears.

R: Right.

E: Hey, welcome to science.

(laughter)

B: Welcome to science.

S: They're trying to say this is a feature of ESP.

J: Oh my god.

S: Rather than a feature of the research.

B: So it's nonexistence is a feature. Nice.

S: Yes. It's inability to document–

R: It's not a bug. It's a feature.

B: Are you kidding me? They're basically saying, "The harder you look, and the less proof you find the harder you look, that's proof."

S: That's part of–

R: Yeah.

S: that's just like saying, "Bigfoot can become invisible and travel interdimensionally. It's just like saying fake acupuncture works too."

R: "Your skeptical energy is disrupting the thing."

J: Wait a second. I see a pattern there.

(laughter)

=== Bigfoot and Cryptozoology (42:28) ===
S: It's all post hoc rationalization as to why the science is invalidating your pseudo-science. Alright. Bigfoot and cryptozoology?

B: Oh, come on.

J: Oh, god.

S: They're nowhere.

R: Continues to be a joke.

B: The biggest thing that happened to Bigfoot was a frozen rubber suit. There you go.

B: A frozen rubber suit.

R: Yeah. That made them all look completely ridiculous. As if they didn't already.

S: A cop who got fired from his job.

B: What made it cool was the suit was from one of my favorite Halloween websites.

E: Costumeurs. 

B: Merchandise websites. Horror dome!

J: I'll never forget that when, Bob–

B: That's a great website.

J: when Bob first saw the costume unfrozen he calls me up and he goes, "I know what company made that, and it's awesome."

(laughter)

B: It's a high end Bigfoot costume, absolutely.

E: Who made the pig guts that they poured all over the costume in the Styrofoam container.

B: That was real stuff. They used some real roadkill didn't they?

R: There was possum DNA in there. Nobody thinks about the poor little possum.

E: Headline read, "Bigfoot Related to Possum." "DNA Concludes"–

S: This was the decade that the surgeons photo was revealed as a hoax in a deathbed confession.

B: Yep. That's right. I forgot about that.

S: Of the Loch Ness monster. The famous Loch Ness monster photo, also called the surgeons photo.

E: The plank of wood.

R: And also with the Bigfoot footage, the famous Paterson film–

E: Oh, the Paterson film, yeah. That was also–

R: someone took that and overlapped and overlapped the frames so that–they steadied the camera to make it look like it was obviously a person walking.

S: Yes. Yeah, right. And we also have to mention on the other side that skeptical scientists investigating this area, Joe Nickell in particular, have made some advances. They've figured out that a lot of sea monster sightings are probably schools of otters swimming in formation.

R: Yeah.

B: Oh, yeah. Right. Excellent. Good one, Joe.

=== New Ageism (49:13) ===
S: Alright. Next category, New Ageism.

B: Ooo, that that–

R: So that's kind of an open category.

B: I think it's–

J: I think it's doing fantastic. It's getting into our healthcare.

R: Well, yeah, that's what I was going to say. If you include alt med in new age then I would say they're winning. Yeah. Or they're better off now than they were 10 years ago.

S: Well, I think they're winning even if you set aside alternative medicine as a separate issue and if you look–there was a recent–we'll probably discuss this in more detail in a future episode{{link needed}} but there was a recent Pew Forum survey looking at a number of belief systems. One was have you ever had a religious or mystical experience and that was skyrocketing from 19562 at 22% saying, "Yes," to 2009, 48% saying, "Yes."

B: Wow.

S: More than double. And the last the decade's a very steep incline up.

J: Blame the counterculture.

S: Yeah. The general sense of mysticism and spirituality and new agey type of beliefs I think are–were advancing their cause in the last decade, in a number of ways. Yeah, alt med only being one of them.
=== Ghosts (50:22) ===
E: You know what else when on the rise, I think, in this decade? I don't know if it was on your list–you were gonna bring it up but ghosts.

S: That's the next one on my list, Evan.

B: Yeah.

S: Ghost hunting–and I agree, and I think that the success of Ghost Hunting as a belief system is entirely due to reality TV.

B: Yep.

ML: Those plumbers.

E: Absolutely. So many TV shows out there on this ghost stuff.

B: I got a list. Ghost Hunters. Paranormal State. Ghost Adventures. Most Haunted, not to mention Medium and Ghost Whisperer.

S: And the G Hunters, don't forget them.

B: Oh yeah.

ML: The G Hunters.

B: Right.

E: I've only seen one episode, though.

B: I think this is transitory, though. I think these aren't going to last that–cause how many times have I seen a preview where all–their main evidence for the week is somebody saying, "Did you hear that?" or, "Something touched me," and that's it.

S: Yeah.

R: I don't know. People–Are people still watching those?

B: I guess.

R: Like is there anyone out there that's still watching that going, "Ooo! Scary."

E: They do. I overhear talk in my office. We've got 40-50 people in the office and at least 3 or 4 of them on any given week–they weekly tune into these shows and–

S: Well, what do they say about it Evan? What is there to say? "Did you see that guy really scare himself?"

R: Right.

E: Exactly.

(laughter)

E: That's what they should be saying but no, they have no clue. They're all caught up in–

B: "Did you see that anomalous infrared image?"

(laughter)

E: It's adults who like to scare themselves. That's all it is.

S: They need to find another hobby.

E: Yeah. Try masturbation.

B: Why? Steve, they're getting rich off of that hobby.

S: I'm talking about the viewers.

R: Viewers, right.

(laughter)

B: Nevermind.

S: No. You're right. For them it was unbelievable. But, I agree, this is going to run it's cycle and it will go away.
=== Paranormal (52:04) ===
S: What about just the paranormal in general?

R: Paranormal in general? I–

S: Anything paranormal.

B: I'd give it an increase. Slight uptick, maybe.

R: I don't know. I'm going to call this one even.

S: Yeah, I think I'm with you, Rebecca. I think it's even.

=== Scientology (52:19) ===

J: Alright. I'll throw another one out there. Scientology.

R: Definitely down.

ML: Oh yeah.

S: They're way on the wane.

J: I don't agree. I don't agree.

S: Their numbers, Jay, their numbers on the wane.

R: Their numbers are dropping.

J: According to who?

R: More and more mainstream–St. Petersburg Times runs a weekly Scientology watch now. Anonymous. All of their skeletons have been dragged out of the closet at this point and they're a total joke.

E: And France has all but illegalized them.

B: Jay, I got two words for you man, couch incident.

(laughter)

B: You know when Tom Cruise jumped on that couch on Oprah and all the other stuff that he said he made Scientology an absolute joke. And did you guys know–I didn't realize this, that there was a common expression called "jumping the couch", kind of like when a TV show jumps the shark.

ML: Jumps the shark, yeah.

B: Used to describe someone going off the deep end in public. Jumping the couch. How awesome is that? I think he hurt Scientology more than anything did because he's so high profile. He was their #1 guy and everyone thought–he went from being at the top box office sensation really, in the world, one of the biggest guys to being a joke. Like, this guy is crazy and something's wrong with him.

S: Don't forget the South Park episode.

R: Yeah.

B: Oh, yeah, the closet.

S: Which–the thing about Scientology, like any cult–

B: Right.

S: is that it trades on secrecy. It advances itself by not letting people know what they really believe until you're deep on the inside. Once that information gets out, once people realize that Scientology is all about this guy Xenu and alien spirits it loses a lot of their ability to advance itself. So I think that's hurt them and those are the kinds of things that once the genie's out of the bottle it's out. So, I've think they've had to actually–had some permanent harm done to them in the last decade. But speaking of South Park, those guys have to get mentioned as–

B: Yeah.

S: one of the real forces of skeptical goodness over the last decade.

E: Definitely.

ML: Oh yeah.

E: Without a doubt.

B: Even though they might not want to put themselves into that group.

S: They don't like labels.

B: No.

S: They don't like labels. Cause they want to go after everyone equally.

B: Yeah. Everyone's fair game to them.

S: Yeah. Right.

=== Alternative Medicine (54:28) ===
S: What about–we mentioned alternative medicine already so let's talk about that just by itself.

R: Yeah. I think that's–

J: Yeah, they're winning this decade.

R: Yeah. Unfortunately.

E: It's on the rise.

J: Infiltrated big time.

R: Mostly with the anti-vax stuff, but also, I think, homeopathy.

J: Academia, from just the stories Steve has told it's getting down right scary what they're doing at universities. It's like, "Wow.

S: They certainly have made ground in the last 10 years. However, I think that they are–

J: Peaking?

S: they're peaking–

J: I hope.

S: and their–in the last decade I think they were cashing in on a lot of the ideological advances they made in the 1990's. The real shift was in the 1990's where fraud because alternative. That's where that shift occurred.

J: Right.

S: And now they're just running with that. And while they continue to gain ground with that I think also in the last 10 years now the counter movement is really organizing and there's now, I think, a scientific backlash forming against alternative medicine and again the way you take the wind out of the sails of movements like this is to expose it for what it really is. This is not about providing alternatives or integrating ideas or anything. This is just about selling fraudulent healthcare with a new flashy label. That's all it is. And once we make that point and really drive it home I think the whole appeal of alternative medicine goes away. So, that is hopefully we're starting to turn the corner there.

J: Yeah.

S: Maybe we'll have this chat again in 10 more years and we'll see how that goes but that's what it seems to me.

J: Hope you're right, man.

S: Anti-vaxxers won this last decade. Flat out. They went from nowhere 10 years ago to being a major movement with–causing a lot of mischief. All the numbers went in their direction.

B: And death. Don't forget death.

S: Vaccine compliance–

E: Gee. Good point, Bob. There's a direct correlation there.

S: Yeah. No, vaccine compliance is down and vaccine preventable diseases are coming back. And they are well funded, well organized, they have now celebrities on their roster. They hugely advanced their cause in the last 10 years. But again, I think there's a cycle to these things. There's–the backlash is happening and we are starting to get mainstream media who see them for what they are and–

J: And we have front line skeptics like Richard Saunders and Dr. Raichi  in Australia, where they have it bad, over there.

S: Yeah.

J: And they're doing a lot of good.

S: They're doing a lot of good work. There's a lot of organizations doing a lot of good work. Paul Offit–

R: Paul Offit.

S: yeah, has been sort of the tireless guy on the front lines taking a lot of personal heat for tirelessly fighting against the anti-vaxxers so he gets props for that.

E: Absolutely.

B: And also, Steve, we're seeing the outbreaks of mumps and measles and things. Things that we thought were gone for good. How long can the anti-vaxxers really last in the face of that? Imagine–and I think it's going to get worse in the next few years it's gonna get worse.

S: Yeah.

B: At some point people are going to be like, "Woah. Wait a second. Look what's going on." People are going realize the correlation here and isn't that going–

S: Yeah.

J: I hope so, Bob.

B: to really burst their bubble at some point?

S: That's what some people think. That when the vaccine preventable diseases really start to come back that will start to turn the tide against the anti-vax movement. We're trying to do it before it gets to that point.

B: Right.

ML: Yeah. It's just too bad it has to get to that point.

S: Yeah. Like the safety valve. Eventually, it'll get to that point. But, I also want to point out that the anti-vaxxers have advanced their cause in the last 10 years despite the fact that the scientific evidence has gone completely against them. 10 years ago there really wasn't much published about thimerosal. Now, 10 years later, we pretty much know it's not associated with autism. Every–there have been more that a dozen solid studies showing that there's no correlation.

B: Right.

J: I know, but Steve, the fear mongering gives them the win.

E: Move the goal post.

J: You can always pull people in with fear.

S: It's true, temporarily. I think, long run the scientific evidence works in your advantage.

R: Although it might not hurt if we campaigned with protests with signs that show exactly what someone looks like when they are stricken with polio.

S: Or dying from measles.

B: Want to know how good the vaccinations have worked? I don't even know what measles and mumps are. I don't know what they look like.

R: Yeah. And that's the problem, I think, is that a lot of people think of them like, "Oh, it's like the chicken pox. You have it when you're a kid. You get over it. It's fine." They don't realize exactly how debilitating these diseases can be. How deadly.

J: That's part of the problem. Yep.

=== Global Warming Advocates and Dissidents (59:18) ===
S: Okay. Next topic. Ready for this one?

B: Yeah.

E: Ready.

S: Global warming advocates and dissidents.

R: Oh, god. Can we just skip it?

J: Oh, god.

ML: Christ.

S: Who won the last decade?

B: I refuse to talk about it.

S: Who's making more ground. Is it the global warming advocates or global warming dissidents?

R: I think advocates only because–

J: Advocates.

B: The advocates.

E: Advocates.

R: talk about it. But, I think it's a close call because the opposition has been so vehement and like disturbingly so. And both sides are so politicized and there's horrible people on both sides. I mean, it's–

S: Yeah.

E: Look at the way corporations and governments are moving, though. The vector is towards solutions for global warming. So, I think in that sense, they're winning out.

J: Yeah.

S: I think I'm going to call this one a tie.

J: Really.

S: Yeah. I think so. I think that the global warming advocates certainly have been successful in setting the agenda and in talking about solutions to the perceived problem of anthropogenic global warming. Global warming dissidents have been very successful in promoting that there isn't a consensus on global warming. That the science is controversial, the science itself. That there's a conspiracy. Even if you–the very recent episode of climategate. They use episodes like that to cast a significant amount of doubt on the notion that there is anthropogenic global warming. So both sides, I think, have advanced their opinions and they're pretty much going head to head in the public arena. I don't know that I could give a clear victory to either side.

R: I think we're all going to lose. That's my pessimistic prediction.

E: Science is going to solve this problem. One way or the other.

S: I agree. I think while this debate rages the science will steadily advance and will solve the problem for us.

E: Yep.

R: I disagree.

E: I have total faith–

(laughter)

S: Not that I would say that I have faith that science will give us a utopia no mater what we do, but I do think that these problems are solvable. They're solvable by incremental scientific advance.

R: I don't disagree with that. What makes me disagree in general with the idea that it will win the day is not that I don't think that science can't come up with these–scientists can't come up with these solutions it's that the politicians and the corporations will implement them. But that remains to be seen.

S: Well, I think–I'll continue to disagree with you in this reason–for this reason. I agree with you that we can't count on politicians to do the right thing. Nor can we count on corporations to be selfless. I think the kind of technological advances that are going to improve the situation are ones that are win win. Ones that are advantageous to corporations and to people. When you can save money and also lower carbon footprint, you'll do it. So when those things come online people will do it. People will get light bulbs that use–

R: If it's not too late.

S: There's that question–

R: By that point the 3rd world countries will be–could be wiped out by drought. So, it's kind of a–

S: That's a question, that, yeah is a tough call. Extrapolating into the future in terms of–I think long term that we will fix this problem. Also, we can't–even though it may be too late in terms of how much CO2 we've already pumped into the atmosphere but we–I think it's possible we can come up with solutions even for that. Even–not just talking about putting less CO2 into the atmosphere going forward–

J: Removing it.

S: Yeah. Dealing with the CO2 that's already there. I think we'll be fine, is my opinion. But no one can predict the future.

R: I hope you're right.

E: Except for psychics.

=== The Skeptical Movement (1:03:20) ===
S: So, final category is the skeptical movement. Where are we now compared to 10 years ago?

J: I would say–

E: God bless the internet.

(laughter)

J: Well, look at what's taken place over the past 10 years. First of all, the podcasting universe took off and so did skeptical podcasts and we have a lot of people getting a lot of very good podcast programming. I think it's fantastic in this way and that we have the–now this whole medium didn't exist before.

S: Yeah.

J: Also, look at how TAM has evolved over the past–we're up TAM8 is coming up so over the past 7 years. We've all heard the story about how what the attendance was like at TAM early on versus today and the demographic has changed. And also just blogging in general, I think, is a good way to gauge how well skepticism is doing. I think we have larger numbers now, today–much, much larger numbers today that we did 10 years ago.

ML: Oh yeah. Definite winner in the last decade.

R: And in terms of battles won, if you look back over all the things we just went over, most of those are losing and I think that's because of the response from skeptics and scientists. I think it's an overall win in terms of more people getting involved not just the podcasts and the blogs as Jay said, those are very important, but they're–it's encouraging grassroots activism of a sort.

S: Yeah.

R: Getting people really involved and making a difference.

S: Absolutely.  If you think about the previous decade there was a lawsuit–a libel suit by Uri Geller against James Randi and–

J: Oh God. Remember?

S: then PSICOP. Without getting into the horey details  the bottom line was that even though the libel suit itself failed it was successful in intimidating the skeptical movement and keeping the skeptical movement more fractured than it otherwise would have been. It was a very successful lawsuit from the point of view of bullying and intimidation, even though it failed legally. You fast forward to this year, we talked about Simon Singh, and the response is very different. Rather the libel suits against prominent skeptics fracturing the movement and hurting us, we rallied behind Simon Singh. It strengthened us and it completely back-lashed against the BCA. And the difference there is that now we are much better networked and organized because of the internet and because we're a bigger, more vibrant, group. We definitely are younger. We have more energy and we definitely have our mojo. I think the last decade–this is an easy call was a huge, big win for the skeptical movement.

B: Yep.

E: Sí.

== E-mails of 2009 (1:06:14) ==
S: So, I pulled out two of–two e-mails that I got over the last year that stuck out. So, I'm going to read them very quickly and you guys if you have any that you wanted to quickly read.

J: Dear skeptics, you suck.

(laughter)

S: As typical we get a lot of feedback. We appreciate the feedback we get from our listeners. We read every e-mail even though, I regret the fact that we don't have time to answer every e-mail I promise you we do read every single one and it's still like 95% positive, I think, and 5% negative. Almost all the negative e-mails we got this year was over our coverage of climategate, actually. Just because that's such a politically contentious issue.

R: Yes. And we look forward to deleting your angry e-mails about tonight's episode.

E: Yes. In 2010 we'll be (inaudible).

B: Or we might save them for next year.

S: But we do love the positive feedback just because it does–it's helps us know that we're having an impact and that's important to keep us motivated to spend all the time and effort that we do in putting out this podcast. So, thanks to everyone who took the time to write us. But I do want to read a couple that stood out to me. Here's the first one. Actually, for some reason I don't have the name of the person who sent this in, but they wrote,
<blockquote>Hey. I'm a completely new listener to your program. My doctor actually prescribed a new drug for my anxiety and noticed that I had my iPhone with me at the consultation. From there he told me that it would be a good idea to sign up to your podcast. He also stated, and I quote, "These guys say that's it's your 'escape to reality'." I was really impressed that, one, I wasn't lectured by my doctor to get therapy, and two, my doctor related to me and gave me useful information in an attempt to find a way to make sense of the horrible bullshit that I had consistently feed into. This bullshit is fed to me by the mainstream media. I would like to express my thanks for your podcast in helping me make the first steps in overcoming my anxiety. However, I still am dealing with my acknowledgment of condition I understand it will never be cured.</blockquote>

R: A doctor prescribed us.

B: That doctor's awesome.

S: The SGU–we were prescribed as therapy for anxiety because we are "you're escape to reality."

R: Can we say, "4 out of 5 doctors recommend"–

ML: Do not operate heavy machine while listening to the SGU.

J: Yeah. Are we a controlled substance?

S: Will we have to be regulated by the FDA?

R: Actually, Jon Ronson told me that he listens to us while he falls asleep every night.

(laughter)

R: And I said, "Should I take that as a compliment or–" he's like, "No. It's just very soothing. Makes me fall asleep.

B: Oh my god.

R: So, yes, do not listen while operating heavy machinery.

J: Could you imagine? That conversation took place somewhere. Two people somewhere were like, "I think you really need to start listening." Really? To us?

(laughter)

S: Well, that was certainly an unusual e-mail. The second one is along a similar line. This is from Kiera Neil from Melborne, Australia, and she writes,
<blockquote>I am almost 13 and this year my dad has been playing your podcasts in the car. I have loved the show as much as he has complaining when I miss something and not wanting to stop when have to wait for the next one. I just wanted to tell you guys that thanks to your podcast my 7th grade science marks have improved amazingly. Just this year I have gone from 72% in my first test to 96% in the last. All because of listening to the podcast. Also, the 5x5 episodes have helped me understand so much. Rebecca you are my idol and I hope to be like when I grow up.</blockquote>

B: Oh my god.

R: Awww.

<blockquote>Your's sincerely, Kiera the budding skeptic.</blockquote>

R: Thanks awesome.

E: Awesome.

R: That makes me feel like I have a lot more awesomeness to do this year to keep up with that.

S: That's right. So not only can you prescribe the SGU for anxiety it will also get you 24% better grades in science class.

R: Can we get that put on Starburst stickers that we can put on the website? Guaranteed to–

E: Well, we were called one of the 15 podcasts that made you smarter.

S: That's true.

R: And also, Health listens to us. Which, you guys are old and– 

S: Yes.

E: Yes.

R: sad and don't but it's awesome!

S: I know that. No, I know that. Although, they think that you're not funny.

(laughter)

R: He did not say–

E: He insulted our humor.

R: They said all of us in general are not funny. So–

S: Really? That's not what I–

R: So–

S: Memories are so flawed.

R: F*** you, Health, but also, you're awesome.

(laughter)

R: I love you.

S: I love you! Go to hell!

?: We like the moon.

R: Can I read one of my favorite e-mails?

S: Yes. Go ahead.

R: It just came the other day. It's from–

(laughter)

R: It's from a listener named Jim who writes,–

ML: Oh yes.

<blockquote>The interview about the LHC was unfortunately what one would expect from a high school student trying to get by without research. Circulating kittens is not possible since you have to use charged particles. It's all magnetic steering and acceleration. It is a very uniformed and dumb question to ask an expert. It's frankly bordering on the insulting.</blockquote>

R: So, I just wanted to thank Jim for writing in to correct us. It turns out it is not, in fact, possible, to circulate a kitten through the Large Hadron Collider. Thank you.

ML: Thank you, Jim.

S: You would think, Brian Cox, who actually operates it, would have known that.

R: Yeah. It's weird that he didn't.

E: He mistook it for the Large Kitten Collider.

R: Right. That's what I was about to say, that–

E: Which is a whole nother device all together.

R: scientists are working on that.

E: He's got to get his facts straight.

S: Yeah. The LKC. Yeah.

R: Right.

S: It's an easy mistake to make.

R: Located beneath Cutopia.

S: That's going to be our first real t-shirt. The LKC. The Large Kitten Collider.

(laughter)

R: Can someone please make an animation that just show what that might look like?

E: Oh please.

R: Cause, I'd pay good money for that.

== Science or Fiction Statistics (1:11:57) ==
S: Mike, I understand that you have compiled some science or fiction statistics for us.

ML: Yes I have.

R: Don't. Uh oh.

E: Oo.

ML: Jay.

R: Now, I would like to say–did you split them up into before Rebecca started recording the podcast at 2 AM–

S: Oh please.

R: and after Rebecca started recording the podcast at 2 AM?

ML: No.

R: I believe that has had a significant effect on my performance.

S: There was too little data for subgroup analysis, Rebecca, so I'm just going to have to go with the meta-analysis–

ML: That's right.

S: of the whole year.

R: Fine.

S: So go ahead, Mike.

R: Go on.

ML: So in 2009 the Science or Fiction stats are as follows. At the bottom is Jay.

J: What?

ML: Yes.

R: That was good. You almost sounded surprised.

ML: Jay–you can look at it half full–glass half empty glass–Jay answered 50% of the questions right.

J: I'm actually shocked cause it felt like I got everything wrong.

R: That's better than average.

ML: Nope. You got half. And then Evan got 56%. Rebecca got 64.3%–

R: Yeah!

ML: and Bob, at the top, is 76.5%–

J: Wow, Bob.

B: 76.

ML: and I got 100%.

J: Yeah. That's cause you're playing by yourself.

R: Good job, Mike.

E: Yeah, ya know.

R: You always win when you play with yourself.

E: That's like a batter getting one at bat in a baseball season.

ML: The longest winning streak was Bob with 9 wins. He did that twice.

E: Nein.

S: In honor of the movie 9.

ML: Yes.

B: Twice.

E: Nein.

ML: That's right, Bob, twice.

E: Oh, that's 18.

ML: The longest losing streak was Jay, with 4. He did that twice, too. And the number of times that everybody lost was 7. The number of times where everybody won was 12. And I started counting–I didn't start counting until about July or August but starting in July or August the number of times Steve was called a bastard was 14.

(laughter)

J: Awesome.

S: So just 14, huh?

ML: Just 14, yeah.

E: 13 by Bob.

J: Thanks Mike.

E: 1 by Rebecca.

R: Thank you for compiling those, Mike.

E: Preciate it, man.

R: But I'm pretty sure that if you just take into account the first of the year I'm beating Bob.

B: Whoa whoa whoa, I don't think so.

R: I'm pretty sure.

ML: I can do that right now. Let me see.

R: Really? On the fly?

S: Really? You can test Rebecca's claim that fast can you?

(laughter)

R: It's okay. I just PayPaled Mike $20.

(laughter)

R: (inaudible) gear, Mike. 

E: I'll just Google it.

ML: No, it's still Bob. Bob had 75%. Rebecca had 73%.

R: Am I closer.

ML: 73.

R: See.

S: Oh, very close. But, still Bob is beating you.

R: 73. I knew it.

E: Close, but no cigar.

R: I took a nose dive. It's 1 in the morning for god's sakes. How am I supposed to answer your crazy fiction science questions?

ML: And Jay's still sitting at 50.

J: 50. I mean what?

R: Aww.

S: Hey, you chose to move to London. You chose your husband over the show, so pay.

R: I did not choose–No.

E: That is true. Yeah.

R: I'd like to correct on this point because it turns out free will is an illusion, Steve.

S: So you didn't actually choose.

R: I did not choose. There is no "me" to choose.

S: The absence of free will is not incompatible with the notion of making choices.

R: Uh, it is, actually.

S: No, it isn't.

R: In this instance, because–

S: Because it serves your purposes.

R: Yes.

S: Okay.

R: Look, I would love to banter with you more, Steve, but it's 1 in the morning and I'm really tired, okay?

S: So, one other comment, do not e-mail us to tell us that this isn't the end of the decade.

R: Oh, god.

ML: Oh, jeez.

R: We don't want to hear it.

E: Or do and get it deleted.

R: I've already set up the filter in Gmail to just it right to trash.

E: Right.

S: We choose to end the decade this year. So that's it. And speaking of which that brings us to the end of our year and decade in review.

R: Oh. This was fun.

S: It was a lot of fun.

R: We should do this every week.

S: We should do this every year.

E: A lot–lot of fun. We should do this every decade.

== The SGU in 2010 (1:15:57) ==
S: I've been looking forward to the SGU in 2010. We got Nexus 2010 coming up April 1717, in New York. TAM8, DragonCon 2010, and then in November we're off to Australia.

R: Australia. Very exciting.

S: Which we are looking forward to.

R: And speaking of things that are happening this year, next Friday–Friday, January 8th, Richard Wiseman will be in Boston. Boston Skeptic's are hosting him at the Brattle Theatre. You can buy tickets on the Brattle Theatre's website or you can find out all the information at bostonskeptics.com.

S: Thanks to everyone for listening over the last year. Thanks to everyone who gave us a donation. We had a nice flurry of donations in the last couple of weeks. I guess people are making their pre-tax year donations.

R: We are still accepting them. FYI.

S: We are still accepting them.

E: Oh yeah.

S: But it helps keep the lights on and keeps the bandwidth going.

ML: It helps–

R: And thank you for the good rating on iTunes. Those are always lovely.

S: And for the podcast award. We appreciate that.

R: Oh yeah. We won a podcast award.

B: Oh yeah.

E: Oh yes. Our first major podcast award.

S: We are now an award winning podcast for the first time.

R: Did we get like a leg lamp or something for that?

B: A leg lamp.

S: We got a laurel and hearty handshake.

B: Hey Steve, I'd like to thank you for working your ass off again this year.

R: Yeah. Thank you, Steve.

J: Yeah.

S: Eh, you don't have to do that every year.

R: Once a year.

E: Steve, you're lazy. You're a lazy bum and you don't do anything.

B: We actually–we got an e-mail not too long ago where someone very explicitly was asking questions about how does Steve do it. How could he possibly get all that done. They think that there's some secret to it.

R: There's a quantum Steve from another dimension that jumped in and helped.

S: Right. And not the stoner, right.

ML: Well, you guys answered that two years ago{{link needed}}. Steve has a bunch of clones in the basement.

E: Dude.

S: Chained up, yeah.

B: Steve works a lot and plays very little. That's what it boils down to.

ML: Really? He's always on WarCraft. I'm always seeing–

B: Well, he's working while he's on there. It's hard work.

E: Exnay on the orcraftway.

== Conclusion (1:18:09) ==

S: Well, thanks to all of you guys for another year.

R: Thank you, Steve.

S: You guys put the hours in, as well.

ML: Thanks, Steve.

J: Our pleasure.

E: Well, thank you, Steve. It's been great.

S: And until next year and next decade, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

{{Outro119}}

== Today I Learned ==

== References ==
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SGU Episode 232

2016-07-26T17:24:28Z

Sunny256: Fix attributions down to just before "Skeptic of 2009", line 825 (35% completed)

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Friday, January 1st, 2010 and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella–

B: Hey everybody.

S: Rebecca Watson–

R: Hello everyone.

S: Jay Novella–

J: Hola.

S: Mike Lacelle–

ML: Hey everyone.

S: and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hey everyone.

R: Who's that Mike guy? What?

S: Mike is joining us for our year end wrap up episode which has become, now, customary.

R: Oh.

S: So, welcome Mike. Evan, you're going to give us a This Day in Skepticism?

E: Absolutely because it was 1975 when Kenneth Rooker discovered the long unknown winter destination of the monarch butterfly in the mountains of Mexico. It was a mystery for a long time.

S: Yeah.

E: I guess they had no idea where the heck the monarch butterflies, all 20 million of these butterflies, would fly off to.

J: How'd he do it? What? Did he follow them?

E: Using tags on the wings of some of the butterflies he followed their migration trails to Mexican territories and he studied it for, well, 38 years of data.

S: And also last night was a blue moon.

B: Yes.

E: That's right.

R: And a lunar eclipse. A partial lunar eclipse.

S: Yes.

R: From my vantage point. Not from yours.

B: Really?

S: Yes. In Europe not in the US.

E: I know. Europe gets–I know.

S: So it doesn't really count.

E: This hemisphere gets cut out of a whole bunch of–

R: All the best stuffs over here guys. I'm telling you.

J: Did you see it?

R: I did see it. I saw the tail end of it as I was stumbling down the street toward the next party.

E: Now, the moon, though, did not turn the color blue.

R: No.

E: As the name would suggest.

R: Blue moon only means that it's the second moon in a month.

S: Second full moon in a month, yeah.

R: Second full moon.

S: And that happens on New Years Eve about once every 19 years. Next one will be in 2029.

B: Is that when Apophis is going to hit the earth?

R: It's around then. Yeah. So we might not even see it. We'll all be dead.

B: It's not going to hit.

E: They refined that, Bob, there's much less chance that that asteroid is going to hit.

B: Yeah. Not in 2029 anyway.

E: Yeah, right.

R: Did you guys see the news of the Russians, though?

E: Yeah! They're going to launch–

R: They're going to blow it out of the sky.

S: Good for them.

E: They're going to launch something and land on that asteroid.

R: Yeah right. I'm a little, shall we say, skeptical, cause I read some interview with the spokesperson and he said that the asteroid was going to come around in something like 2026 or '27. He was very vague and I was just thinking you should really have all your facts straight when you arm your missiles.

S: Yeah, you've got to be kinda precise on that point.

J: Yeah, isn't it possible that they could do something to it and actually jockey it into a worse position?

B: Oh yeah.

E: That was my thought, too.

R: Yeah.

S: They could knock it into one of the keyholes. They absolutely could.

ML: They'd need to hire Bruce Willis for the job.

S: So this is the episode where we reminisice about the best moments over the last year.

B: And decade.

S: And the SGU–and decade–and also we're going–

E: Alright.

S: –to talk about some–

B: The millenium?

S: –the best and worst of science and skepticism in the last decade.

J: Wow.

== Listener Feedback (3:11) ==
S: But first lets go through our listener feedback as to their most outstanding SGU moments of 2009. There were a few votes for best episode. I think the one that got the most votes, though, was Rebecca's wedding.

E: Of course.

B: Yay.

R: Aww.

ML: Yeah.

R: Thank you. That was my favorite, I think.

E: Well, that was a hopefully once in a lifetime event.

B: You think?

S: I think the second one was the Nexus 2009 with Richard Wiseman as a guest.

E: That was so much fun.

R: Yeah.

J: He was awesome on the show.

S: Two live events got the most votes.

R: We did more live events this year than any previous year because we did those, we did DragonCon. Well I guess that's it but that's still a lot.

S: Yeah.

(laughter)

E: TAM, DragonCon, (inaudible)

S: And much more!

E: We'll be doing all that plus Australia this year.

R: That's true.

S: Yeah. We'll have even more live events in 2010. That's true.

R: Soon we'll get to the point where we're just doing a live show every week. That'd be fun. (inaudible) exhausting.

E: The live events are great. Being there. The immediate feedback from the audience is just something we don't typically, obviously, typically don't experience and it's always great.

S: Yeah. It's good. Honestly it's good for a once in a while thing. The downsides to the live events are that they're technically challenging and often a little bit out of our control. We're at the mercy of whatever venue we're at.

R: Yeah.

B: Yeah.

S: And we also don't control the questions, so while live questions are great we can't use them to set ourselves up to talk about topics we want to talk about.

E: That's true.

S: And they tend to be–live questions tend to be a little repetitive. I mean it's good ever now and then but it's obviously not going to become a regular thing.

R: But there's the hanging out with you guys thing. That's always fun.

S: Yeah. We love it.

E: That goes without saying. Yes.

J: It's definitely a lot more fun for me, as a panelist, to see you guys and have the face to face interaction.

R: Definitely, yeah.

J: Crazier stuff happens at the live events like Bob coming out in a costume.

B: Yeah, that was awesome.

J: Rebecca getting married.

S: Right. Right.

== Guests of 2009 (5:12) ==

S: We had a lot of great guests in 2009. We always do a good job of pulling in some interesting interviews. Those that got the most votes: one was Michael Vassar, if you remember him. He's the singularity guy. A lot of people just said that singularity guy.

(laughter)

S: Because it was just a very, not only interesting interview, but it was a little contentious and I think people liked that. The next one was Rusty Schweickart–

B: Yeah.

S: –if you remember the Apollo astronaut.

B: That was great.

S: That was, I think, my most surprising interview of the year. Phil Plait hooked us up with Rusty and it's one that I didn't see coming until Phil say, "Hey, I can get you this guy." And it turned out to be a really interesting interview. Just talking with him about his first hand experience with going up in Apollo was fascinating.

B: Yeah. That rocket door. That's something you never ever read about. Never hear about. Just those subtle little things that only someone really on the rocket would experience and know. It's just fascinating stuff.

S: Yeah. One e-mailer said that he's been a real Apollo fan for years and thought he knew everything there was to know about that launch and yet he still learned little tidbits from Rusty on that interview.

B: Cool.

J: Yeah there was a couple of things that he said like how much the rocket compresses during liftoff, but when they turn those booster off and the whole rocket snaps back to it's original size, which, I think, it's a few inches that it crunched down, and it lurched up forward and his head almost hit the freaking control panel.

S: Yeah. Cause the loosened their straps. They shouldn't oughta had done that.

B: That's it.

B: It's hard to plan and expect that. In the simulation.

S: Yeah. That brings up that point that here you have a multi-million dollar program, how many engineers and just really people involved in thinking through every little tiny little detail and yet you can't anticipate things like the astronauts loosening their shoulder straps so they can move around a little bit more and then almost cracking their open on the control panel. I mean, they couldn't anticipate that. There's no substitute for experience is the bottom line.

J: Yeah. Just talk to someone who actually went through that. Not only is the guy an icon in history but he did it. He was there. He strapped himself into that thing and did that unbelievable, awesome, science thing that when I was a kid and read about it and saw videos about it, that got me interested in science.

S: Any other interviews stand out in your guys' minds?

R: I think Tim Minchin got a number of votes on the year end wrap up thread.

S: Yeah.

R: And for good reason. Tim is always incredibly entertaining–

E: Absolutely.

R: –and such a wonderful performers. So he's a lot of fun to interview.

ML: Michio Kaku was awesome.

B: That was a great get. Yeah.

S: Yeah. Michio Kaku got a lot–

ML: Really interesting stuff.

S: Ken Miller was great interview as well and got a lot of votes.

B: Yeah.

S: Ken Miller is an evolutionary biologist who deals a lot with Creationism and just, again, one of the most knowledgeable and thoughtful people, I think, on that topic. And Mark Crislip got a lot of mention as well. He's a recurring guest on our show. Did the H1N1 special with us and also has his own podcast, Quackcast, so he has a lot of experience behind the microphone. Mark is always fun to talk to.

ML: Award winning podcast.

J: Yeah. And his show is fantastic. I always learn something when I listen to his show. Actually, I learn a lot. He pile drives detail into his show like crazy. But his sense of humor just gets me. The whole time I'm listening to him I'm half laughing.

E: Interview Brian Brushwood was great, as well, because who knew that later that year we'd be eating fire with him?

S: That's right.

E: On the campus of Yale.

S: There may be a video appearing on Youtube sometime soon of us eating fire with Brian Brushwood.

J: Yeah, he's a great guy.

S: Well there are many great interviews this year but those are the ones that got specifically mentioned by our listeners.

== SGU's Funniest Moment (9:24) ==

S: The next category was the SGU's funniest moment for 2009 so before I start listing what our listeners said, do you guys have any that stick out in your mind.

ML: There's some funny conversation between Rebecca and Steve about birds. Early on in the year.

S: Can you be more specific?

ML: It was about bird jizz or something like that.

R: Was that he jizz one?

S: You mean when we were talking about bird jizz? Yeah.

ML: Yeah. You remember that time, you were talking about birds? That time.

R: I do remember discussing jizz.

S: A lot of people liked when we were talking about vomix and pasketti and mamatos.

R: And mamatos.

(laughter)

S: Some people liked Rebecca's line. Rebecca's good for the one liners. She said, "I can't believe the chronic doesn't cure the chronic."

R: I was pretty proud of that one too, actually.

S: The Cluckasaurus rex discussion was good.

J: That was good, Ev.

E: Yeah. That was good.

== Best Science News Story of 2009 (10:17) ==
S: Best science news story of the year. This is an interesting one. What do you guys think?

B: The few that I liked–one of them was Ardipithecus ramidus. That was a tour de force of research and work that these scientists did over many years to put it all together before the submitted it which is what they did this year, which is basically an early stage of human evolution. It's older than Lucy. That was a tour de force, I think. That was a very intersting–the biggest surprise for me was the whole magnetic monopoles that supposedly found.

R: The monopoles, yeah.

B: That was–I remember when, Evan, you told me that, we were down at DragonCon you mentioned it–

E: That's right.

B: And I was like, "What? No way!" I just refused to believe it until I read about it. So that was–

R: That was when we were all at the Hibachi place or whatever.

B: Yeah. Right.

S: Yeah.

B: So, that was a big one for me.

S: That was definitely the most surprising headline I saw.

B: Yeah.

S: You know, "magnetic monopole?" That can't be.

B: What? Just a bare, positive or–I mean a North or South? What are you talking about? But yeah, it looks like they did. I haven't read much more about it but I think that they're still going with that interpretation. And then water on the moon. That was big. Big story. God, how many news items were made of that? That was really–a really cool thing that was finally proven.

S: Yeah. It's nice that there's water there if we ever do set up a base it'll certainly make it a lot more feasible–

B: Right.

S: to have some raw material there that's very useful. Bob, what's really interesting to me–the Ardipithicus got a lot of votes–a lot of magazines' top 10 lists. The one I didn't see was Ida or Darwinius masillae.

R: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

R: I was going to bring that up on worst science news.

S: Yeah. That was the biggest–the science was fine, but the media flap was a flop. I mean it was terrible.

E: Media flop.

S: They–this is the scientists they tried to be media savvy and they did a documentary and a website and a book and the hype that they put behind–it's basically a primate fossil. The specimen is lovely, I mean it's a very well preserved specimen.

B: Yeah. Beautiful.

S: And it is from a period of time potentially connecting two branches of primates. One leading to prosimians, like lemurs, and the other leading to monkeys, apes, and the group that also includes humans, but they tried to make it seem like this had special significance for humans, and it didn't. It was really–No one really bought that. It just seemed odd. And they also were making really ridiculous statements like this is going to hit the scientific community like an asteroid. And they over sold it so much that it was just [sad trombone]. Nothing.

B: Yeah.

S: And now at the end of the year nobody even remembers it. So–

E: Apparently, I–

S: it's not even making anybody's list.

B: I forgot about it. If you didn't mention it I wouldn't have thought.

S: Yeah. Total fail.

B: Yeah.

S: It was a total science media fail.

B: Failure.

B: And you remember some of those articles written about it were really bad.

S: Yeah, yeah. Just terrible. I definitely like the water on the moon, Bob, and I would have to add to that methane on Mars.

B: Yep.

S: That's still in contention that that that could be from life.

E: Absolutely.

S: Sounds like they've ruled out meteors. There's no geological process that we know of that could explain it so it's something unknown or maybe it's little Martian critters.

J: Yeah. Bottom line if that's bacteria producing it that's the biggest news story of the century.

S: Yeah. Millennium in my opinion.

B: Yeah. Maybe next year.

E: Life one another planet. I mean that–psh–forget it.

S: Non-Earth life–that's huge. Huge.

R: Yeah. That would win.

E: It was the year of H1N1, too. There was so much going on with the flu and the swine flu–so much press on it.

S: Yeah. And it's–

E: It's kind of passed us by right now but if you remember the summer months–

B: It was big.

E: every other headline was about H1N1.

S: Yeah. And the flu is still chugging along. We're still right in the midst of it. There is a lot of scare mongering about the vaccine. Made Discover's #1 science story of 2009 was the fear mongering surrounding vaccines and they got the story right, so good for them.

E: Yeah.

S: And here we are several months into the vaccination program and nothing. There's like no extra cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, there's no–really nothing rising above background for any side effects so it's turned out, thank goodness, to be completely safe.

E: So you're saying the media hyped it? What?

S: It wasn't so much–it was definitely partly the media but the anti-vaccination movement really went full bore and also just a lot of alternative medicine groups and anyone who has a beef with science based medicine or vaccines particular used the H1N1 swine flu vaccine as a scare tactic and nothing. It turned out that, as we predicted, it's a safe vaccine. It's known technology. We'll monitor it closely but we don't expect any surprises and it turned out to be totally fine.

E: Yep.

S: I also think we should mention this was the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landings on the moon.

E: Oh. Good point.

S: And one of the coolest things to come out of that was–actually not directly tied to the anniversary but one of the coolest Apollo related stories was the LRO taking pictures of the lunar landing sites–the Apollo landing sites–

E: Yeah.

S: Including the footpaths of the astronauts shuffling through the regolith.

E: Part of the greater conspiracy.

S: Yeah.

(laughter)

R: There were a lot of great photos that came out this year. Especially more wonderful photo's of Cassini. The things that Carolyn Porco always shows in her talks. I think we talked about some of the pictures.

S: And we have to mention the Large Hadron Collider went online this year.

B: Back online. Yes.

R: We didn't die.

S: Back on. But it actually started smashing stuff.

J: And did break records. It's now the most–

ML: (inaudible)

J: the most energetic.

S: It is the most energetic collider in the world. Yep.

J: Yeah. Absolutely not an insignificant thing happening. That is the most expensive and complicated machine that humans have ever built, right?

S: Yes.

E: Absolutely. And number of black holes created by the Large Hadron Collider?

S, J, M, B: Zero.

R: So far.

ML: And Steve, you said it was the 40th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing's, it was also the 40th anniversary of the internet–

S: Oh, is that right?

ML: in 2009. Yes. The first 4 node network was made by ARPA–ARPANET is what is was called back then in December of 1969.

R: Which is related to the LHC, actually. I mean, it's the same people, isn't it?

B: Right. CERN, yeah.

S: Yeah. Yeah.

R: Yeah.

S: Some other ones that got mentioned was crocoduck.

R: Crocoduck is a good one.

E: Quacksnap.

S: The quacksnap, yep. The holographic universe.

J: That still totally freaks me out.

B: They like that one, huh?

S: Yeah.

R: Oh, yeah.

B: That was freaky.

S: Yeah. It's essentially like our universe–you can make an analogy between the way our universe is structured and a hologram meaning that it's just a–there's a graininess to our universe which is due to the fact that it's really a picture on–as if it were a picture on the surface of a sphere. I guess it's on a 4-dimensional–the surface of a 4-dimensional sphere. So it's kind of like a hologram. It's hard to do it justice without spending another 20 minutes talking about it but go back and listen to that episode{{link needed}}.

B: Yeah. That's it in a nutshell.

R: Basically, we're all living inside a snow globe.

S: Right.

E: Oh no. Ah! They're shaking it again! Ah! Hey, we were talking about 40th anniversary stuff. Other numbers or years of significance that occurred–150 years, Origin of Species–

S: That's right.

E: 200 years, Darwin's birthday.

B: Yeah.

E: 400 years, Galileo's telescope.

S: Very nice.

B: I'll throw another one in there 50 year anniversary of physicist Richard Feynman's very famous lecture, There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom that he gave at the American Physical Society at Caltech where he basically laid out the potential of nanotechnology, essentially. Really laid it out there, as far as I could tell, for the very first time. Anniversary of note, I think.

== Most Outrageous Illogical Statement or Pseudo-Scientific Claim of 2009 (18:37) ==
S: Let's go now to the other side–the flip side the most outrageous illogical statement or pseudo-scientific claim of the year. A lot of people voted for the YouTube video on how homeopathy works. Do you guys remember that one. 

R: Yes.

B: That was awesome.

?: Loved it.

S: That totally incomprehensible nonsense about trying to explain homeopathy. It was really just amazing. The thing that always gets me is that you could take mass out of E=mc2 cause there's not that much mass in the universe so you can just eliminate it from the equation.

B: Yeah. That was good.

ML: They get an 'A' for effort.

B: Wow.

R: It's one of those things where it's delivered by someone who says something like that and then smiles and nods and then everyone in the audience just smiles and nods. "Yeah. Of course. You can do that. Yeah."

S: Oh, we didn't actually see the audience in that YouTube video.

J: You know, Steve, you don't have to–

S: You can imagine what the audience was doing but it's irrelevant. The thing is it was trying to make sense–

R: It's the assumed authority by the person who's speaking such completely and utter BS.

S: Right. Yeah. She projects that she should have some authority, and she's spoke like a teacher talking to 5 year olds, too.

R: Right.

S: Which made it all the more entertaining as a skeptic.

B: A teacher who mispronounced people's names.

S: Yes.

B: Hawkings.

S: Hawkings. We–it's wonderful when homeopaths or pseudo-scientists do a better job than we can of making their belief systems seem ridiculous. I mean, we don't have to do anything else except point to that.

R: I think, one of my favorite news stories that–maybe it's true, maybe it's not pseudo-science, but the LHC reaching back in time to stop itself from happening.

S: Yeah, right.

ML: Yes.

R: I loved that story.

B: Yeah. That was fun.

R: Really? There's nothing you could say to that.

J: You so don't know if those scientists–we don't know if they were actually doing it as a thought experiment or if they were serious, right?

S: Yeah.

B: Well, I think they were serious, absolutely.

S: I think that was definitely the most bizarre thing to come out of a serious science paper.

B: Steve, could we go over some of the best Xbox360–

ML: Yes, let's do it.

J: Yeah. Let's do that.

E: Oh, wait wait. I have a quote for you. I want to see if you know who said this, in 2009. "They took this beautiful man and they basically put poison into him. Why couldn't they have built him up nutritionally and gotten rid of the toxins in his body? We have an epidemic going on and I have–"

J: Suzanne Somers.

E: Yay.

S: About Patrick Swayze.

E: Yes. About Patrick Swayze.

ML: Oh, god.

R: Defiling the memory of Patrick Swayze.

ML: Most outrageous statement, "Steve eats babies."

S: Yeah, the whole–the anti-vaccine movement deserves a big mention. They get my vote–I don't want to get ahead of ourselves but they're the skeptical–

B: Too late.

S: jackass of the year collectively, and that certainly is part of why. But back to the science stories the one that got a mention for ridiculous claims was when the study came out showing that essentially fake acupuncture was no different than quote unquote "real" acupuncture and the scientists concluded that therefore fake acupuncture must work too. Let's just turn the entire premise of scientific medicine on its head just for this one study.

J: When you just said that, Steve, I had about a 3 second rage fire through me. I just need to do something violent about that, right now.

R: I'm so glad I'm not in the same room with you.

J: Let's talk about something good. How about they found water on the moon.

S: It's true. They did. But don't forget–

J: That's fantastic.

S: don't forget, quantum jumping! That was a good discussion.

R: Quantum jumping. That was a great one. That was where–

B: That was good.

R: we went on a long rant about going to different dimensions, right?

S: To learn skills from other versions of yourself.

R: Yes.

E: Yeah.

R: Yeah.

J: Rebecca, you said something about how you could pay for it by loving yourself.

(laughter)

R: Which you know you would do.

S: Another item that got some votes was the claim that Thomas Jefferson was a creationist before the Origin of Species was published.

R: Oh, right.

S: Before evolutionary theory was presented. Yeah, that's meaningful.

E: Yeah.
== Jackass of 2009 (23:02) ==
S: Well, lets move on to the jackass of the year. We already mentioned the anti-vaccinationists so J.B. Handley I think has to stand in for that crew. I think he was the person who was most pushing that forward this year and the baby eating picture was just the most disgusting thing that they did. But just their increasing efforts to work tirelessly against vaccines as a science based health care intervention and just the tactics they use are absolutely horrendous so they get my vote. They get my vote. I agree with Discover Magazine.

R: I think I would throw in with the BCA, the British Chiropractic Association, since I'm representing from the jolly old England and just if any listeners have been asleep for the past year they're the people who are suing Simon Singh for libel.

S: Right.

R: For saying that their treatments are bogus. Which they are. So, I suppose I'll be sued now, too. Anyway, douchbags. Jackasses.

J: I kinda see Susanne Somers and Jenny McCarthy just kind of hovering around each other.

S: Yeah.

E: You gotta throw Oprah in there, I think, to that coven of witches, too.

S: Yeah. I think Oprah really won last year. I don't know that–she's kinda been coasting this year. Did she really do anything new? I mean she did Jenny McCarthy her own show.

E: She gave McCarthy the show. Yeah.

ML: Right.

R: Yeah.

B: That's pretty bad.

R: And she's retiring to, probably, only–she's retiring her show, I should say, to only rise up in a douchier way later, I'm sure.

S: Right.

R: But–

S: Not her media empire.

R: Right.

S: Jay, if you're going to mention Susanne Somers I think we have to also give honorable mention to other cancer quacks. Gonzales, whose treatment for pancreatic cancer this year was shown to be much worse than standard therapy. In fact, it was as bad, if not worse, than no treatment at all, and yet he continues to push it. And Hulda Clark who finally died this year.

E: Halda.

S: It's an in memoriam.

J: Yep. Definitely.

R: And, how about the guy who treated the H1N1 cheerleader?

S: Oh, yes. But that gets all wrapped up–

R: Desiree Jennings.

S: Yeah. Desiree Jennings. It gets wrapped up in the anti-vax stuff. That was the other really nasty thing this year. The exploitation of that poor girl, Desiree Jennings. And that was Buttar.

R: Buttar, yeah.

S: The guy who treated her with chelation therapy. Totally disgusting.

E: That was bad.

ML: What about the pope?

R: The pope for–condoms

ML: For his comments on condoms and AIDS his recent rant about women.

E: Everything. This is one of the worst Popes in a long, long time.

R: He's a pretty bad Pope.

S: Worst Pope of the year.

ML: Palpatine.

(laughter)

J: I need more Popes.

E: I'm going to throw an honorable mention to Charlie Sheen. Charlie.

S: Oh, Charlie.

E: Who led the raves of the 9/11 deniers this year.

S: Yeah, but it was the death throes of the 9/11 denial–the Truther movement, right?

B: The death rattle.

S: The death rattle. They're pretty much done.

E: But he gets the honorable mention, also, because he was arrested for allegedly wielding a knife against his girlfriend.

R: That's true.

E: So, what we have here is a knife wielding 9/11 denier–

R: Allegedly.

E: I think when you put that combination together that is by definition a menace to society and therefor deserves mention.

S: Evan, you're poisoning the well, with the whole knife wielding–

(laughter)

R: No no. This needs to be said.

E: I said "allegedly."

R: It needs to be said, though. It happened. It's in the news.

E: It's true.

S: Alright. What about Bill Maher?

J: Yeah.

R: Yeah. Yeah. He's big news but only–the funny thing, though–Okay, so he was a jackass, yes, because of his denying any form of science based medicine but it's not through anything that he did specifically this year. It's only because of what that foundation did to give him a prize for it and I think they're the jackasses.

S: He got the–giving Maher the Richard Dawkins reward.

R: Yes.

S: Yeah. They definitely go on the list.

R: I think that they're jackasses for promoting such an anti-science jackass.

E: They took a lot of heat for that.

J: Yeah. I agree with Rebecca.

B: But as long as he's an atheist.

S: Right.

R: Right. Even though he's not and has specifically said, "I'm not an atheist."

S: Yeah.

R: I mean they pretty much failed on every level there.
== Skeptic of 2009 (27:34) ==
S: Well, the final category that we put to our listeners was the skeptic of the year and the person who got the most votes was Phil Plait and we brought and we brought Phil on to chat with us for a few minutes about that and to let him know that he won. But before we got to that interview lets go through the honorable mentions. Other people who were also mentioned by listeners as skeptic of the year. Richard Wiseman got mention, as did Richard Dawkins and P.Z.–

B: Simon Singh.

ML: Simon Singh, yeah.

S: Simon Singh

B: Simon Singe.

R: Simon Singe?

S: Simon Singh for–

B: I can't help it. I always say that when I say his name. I love that. It's like a super hero name. Simon Singe.

(laughter)

S: And he has some kind of fire based super power.

B: Of course.

S: Simon Singe. That's actually pretty good.

ML: It's not water based, Steve.

R: That's why homeopathy–I can imagine there's a homeopathy–

B: Yeah. He fights homeopathy with fire power.

R: villain. Sprays them with water.

(laughter)

B: He's also know in smaller circles as The Evaporator.

(laughter)

E: Very small circles.

S: And Amy Wallace of Wired Magazine was mentioned, as well, for her article on the anti-vaccine movement. Always nice to get a good, solid, mainstream journalist–journalism–

B: Yeah.

R: Yeah, she was fantastic.

S: getting the science right.

R: Although, I think that–I probably gave it to Simon last year, too, but, I think I would have gone with him again this year because–

E: Nothing wrong with that.

R: he's just so boldly leading the fight against the chiropractors as well as the entire British libel law problem. It's really impressive.

S: Definitely deserves props.

E: He's suffered the most arrows.

B: Yeah.

S: And some mentioned the crew over at Science Based Medicine. So I have to mention my colleagues over there–

J: Yeah.

E: Here here.

ML: Yep.

S: who are, trust me, they are working hard with forming the Institute for Science and Medicine, this year. They're now doing double time service, running Science Based Medicine and now ISM. Really, they've been incredibly hard working this year.
== Interview with Phil Plait (29:39) ==
S: So, let's bring Phil Plait on to chat about a few things. Phil, welcome to the Skeptics' Guide.

PP: Hey. How's it going guys?

B: Good, Phil.

S: It's always a pleasure to have you on and we wanted to chat you for our year-end wrap up show. Now we have a done a very informal survey of our listeners through the forums. So, it was somewhat selective–self selective sample of our listeners and we asked them to vote for a number of things including the skeptic of the year and guess who got the most votes.

PP: Uhh... Jenny McCarthy.

S: She was very close.

PP: Meryl Dorey. Who else is there?

S: Actually, Jenny McCarthy was in the running for jackass of the year.

PP: Really?

S: That's right.

E: She got plenty of votes.

PP: (laughter)

S: But, absolutely yeah. She's starting to become a favorite. But Phil Plait, #1 votes for skeptic of the year from our listeners.

PP: You're kidding. Really?

S: Yeah.

PP: What were they thinking?

S: Really.

PP: Was this before or after I announced I was leaving the JREF?

S: It was in the last couple weeks, so–. And also you got a lot of votes for favorite interview of the year but you had more opportunities than most other guests.

PP: (laughter) That's not fair. I've been on more than Rebecca has recently.

S: Somebody calculated you've been on 5.1% of episodes.

PP: Is that by time or by word usage or by Star Trek references?

E: By Stardate.

S: Yeah. Star Trek reference I think would be much higher than that. So congratulations. There's no trophy or anything. It's just–

PP: Well, I'd like to thank all the little people.

S: You get to come on our show and chat with us.

E: Yay!

PP: Yeah. That's really very cool. I'm surprised and grateful and [insert cliche here]. 

S: Yeah.

PP: That's really cool.

S: Well, seriously, you are one of the work horses of the skeptical movement. You're ubiquitous, right? You do a lot of things.

PP: Well, that just goes to show you how disorganized and sad the skeptic movement is.

(laughter)

PP: I'm not even wearing pants right now and so I think–well, I'm wearing sweat pants I guess that counts, sort of. Just means we have to have more professionals getting involved. That's why D.J. Grothe's going to be running the JREF now. He's actually a little bit more professional than I am.

E: And he has a tailor.

PP: True. His beard is far more neatly trimmed than mine is.

B: But Phil, it's really true that you're amazingly accessible. When I listen back to the shows and whenever we have you on we all laugh a lot more, there's a lot more energy when we talk to you because you push it up a notch.

PP: I can here that in your voice, so–

(laughter)

PP: No. Seriously, that's–it's terrific. That's really wonderful. Now if all those people would actually buy my book that would be even better.

S: Let's not get crazy. So, Death from the Skies, is that out in paperback yet?

PP: Yeah. Yeah. It's got the creepy comic book cover and everything.

J: Phil actually had a version of it printed on one big toilet paper roll so you could just slowly read it when you're in the john.

PP: Read it one page at a time. That'd be great.

S: That's where I read it anyway.

R: That's actually a good idea, guys.

S: Toilet paper books.

PP: I'm just thinking this through.

S: You have to read far enough ahead depending on how much you need to use.

PP: In fact, in fact, if you're going to write a murder mystery where the mystery is resolved on the last page, that's a great way to make sure people don't go to the last page and read it first, because you can't really get to it without making a huge mess.

J: Yeah.

B: That is a good idea cause I think your friends would buy it, and your enemies.

PP: True.

B: Cause your enemies would just really get into it.

PP: And they'd have to buy it in a 9 pack so it would really–you'd really boost sales that way, too.

E: Yeah, but it's super absorbent, so–

PP: You could see a wall of your books at Target.

S: But then–the thing is you couldn't share a bathroom with somebody because you miss the segments when they were using it.

PP: In fact, in fact, this–

B: His and hers toilet paper.

PP: this would prevent piracy.

E: That is true.

PP: Nobody's going to steal it and it's your own personal download.

(laughter)

PP: Thank you. Thank you.

E: I love toilet humor.

PP: And you can hear everybody on the SGU forums changing their vote right now.

(laughter)

E: Click click click-click.

S: So, Phil, what are your plans for next year?

PP: Blogging. Secret stuff I can't talk about yet.

S: Just, more of the same plus the secret stuff you can't talk about.

PP: Well, less of some things but more–it'll be writing the blog I've got–I've got some other writing things I'd like to do. I've been tossing around some ideas for a long time and it just depends how much time I have. I just wrote a couple of articles for the print version of Discover Magazine. They come out with a special issue every few months. This one's called Extreme Universe! and they asked me to write short blurbs about my favorite bad and good science and science fiction movies, so, that's available on newsstands everywhere. So you can pick that up. But I'd like to more for that. I've been wanting to write for the print version of the magazine for a long time so we finally got around to doing that Testing that out. I really enjoy writing. I haven't gotten tired of it yet, which surprises me because of I get tired of almost everything after a short period of time. I'm still really enjoying sitting down and just talking about this stuff. So I'm hoping to do more.

S: Phil, let me put you on the spot and ask you a couple quick questions.

PP: Okay.

S: Biggest astronomy news item of 2009.

PP: Water on the moon.

S: Okay. What about methane on Mars?

E: Close second?

PP: The methane on Mars is still too much of mystery and not well understood.

S: Okay. Fair enough.

PP: For me to be–It's big news, it's very interesting, but we don't know how big it is as opposed to water on the moon which actually is extremely interesting.

S: Yeah. We know exactly what the utility of that is.

PP: Yes.

B: Right.

S: Yeah. Phil, biggest astronomy news item of the decade.

J: Ooo.

PP: Oh, I don't know. That's too hard.

S: Okay.

PP: Now we had basically kind of sort of direct evidence for dark matter in the Bullet Cluster observations.

S: Yeah.

PP: This cluster–the two different clusters of galaxies slammed into each other and you can measure directly where the gas is, you expect in a head on collision between two clusters the gas in the clusters would slam into each other and stop dead like two cars on the highway moving at opposite–head on at 60 mph they kind of stop. The stars pass through each other the gas stops, but the dark matter, theoretically should just keep going and when you measure the effects of dark matter through it's gravity that's exactly what they found.

S: Right.

PP: So, it's a statistical observation in that you can't point and say that's where the dark matter is, kinda sorta. It's more like–it's like predicting how many times you're going to flip a coin heads if you flip it 100 times. It's about 50. And so you can statistically say the same thing about dark matter. Where do you expect to see it? By measuring it's effects on the light coming from background galaxies which gets affected as it passes through the dark matter. And when you do that you say, "Oh look. The dark matter's moved on," and so you can just clearly see that the dark matter exists. And if that makes no sense I'm actually waving my hands. If you could see me the hand waving makes it all very clear. But you can look up "Bullet Cluster" on the web and you'll find things about that.

S: Yeah. Phil, one more question. We're talking about the big winners and losers over the last decade in terms of not whose right or wrong, but who has advanced their agenda. Now I'll just get your opinion about one thing. Moon hoaxers. Do you think the last decade was good for them or bad for them?

PP: Well, 2001 is when the Fox TV show came out. The conspiracy theory. Did we land on the moon? And so that was a huge boost for them. There have been–it's been mentioned in a couple of movies and it's kind of gotten into the popular culture. However, I think most people understand that the real promulgators of this conspiracy theory are lunatics and so it's–on the other hand they've gained a lot of ground with kids who are young and don't know how to parse a logical argument very well.

S: Do you think the Mythbusters special on the moon hoax took a chunk out of them?

PP: I have no idea. It's so hard to measure these sorts of things. If you measure it by number of YouTube commenters, which is of course the gold standard of how things work, certainly there are a lot of these guys out there. There are a couple of them out there that call me names that always crack me up. It probably infuriates them that I ignore them, so, that makes me happy. I think they're probably gaining ground in younger kids but that's the kind of thing that people tend to grow out of. So, I really don't think 5 years from now somebody who's 12 years old and thinks the Apollo landings are fake when they're 17 I think they're going to look back and think, "Oh, what was I thinking."

S: Yeah.

PP: So, there you go.

S: Well Phil, it's always awesome to have you on the show.

PP: Ah, it's been great. Happy New Year.

S: Yes. Happy New Year. Looking forward to another banner year of skepticism.

PP: Yay.

B: Phil, you're awesome.

PP: True.

(laughter)

PP: No. You guys are. And I'm pointing right at the little avatars of you on Skype right now.

B: Aw, thanks Phil.

E: Avatar. Seen that movie.

PP: Oh, god. No. No!

E: It's Avatar.

PP: Don't make me talk about that.

S: Alright. Goodnight Phil.

J: See ya next year, Phil.

E: Goodnight Phil.

PP: Talk to you later.

== 2000 to 2010 in Skepticism (39:15) ==
S: Well, I thought we turn from 2009 to the last decade and talk about–what I want to do is I want to throw out to you guys some big topics that skeptics deal with and then we're going to chat about whether or not we thought over the last decade they were winners or losers.

B: Okay.

S: Okay?

R: Okay.

=== Creationism/Intelligent Design (39:39) ===
S: So, I'll give you an easy one to start out with. For example, the whole Creationism/Intelligent Design movement. What kind of a decade did they have?

R: They lost so much.

J: Lost.

B: Big time. Dover was one–

E: Dover crushed them.

B: Dover. Huge huge epic fail on their part.

E: It didn't destroy them. You can't destroy these unsinkable ducks, but, I mean that Dover case was a nice, nice victory for science and skepticism.

R: Right. And speaking of that and just to reach slightly back to the skeptic of the year I think Eugenie Scott deserves a mention for continuing that fight in Texas this year with the Texas State Board of Ed fight to include–to keep science in the textbooks.

S: Yeah. Well, she's on the short list for skeptic of the decade. Even though we didn't ask for that category. I definitely think she's someone who over the last 10 years has consistently fought for science in that arena. And she's gotten–definitely this year, though, we should mention, she was given a couple of really significant awards. Recognitions of her work. She was honored by the California Academy of Sciences in October and she won the Gould prize by Scientific American. So–

E: That could have gone to so many people.

S: The Steve J. Gould prize. Yep. So, she definitely deserves mention. What about–so I agree that in general the Creationism/Intelligent Design movement, they're intellectually bankrupt, they're really desperately flailing around for a strategy. They got hit hard at Dover. There new strategy in the last decade has been the academic freedom angle.

J: Yeah. Expelled.

S: Which I don't–Yeah, I don't think–Expelled, I think was a failure.

E: I think so, too.

S: Yeah. It doesn't have that much legs but they did make some mischief in Texas if you recall–

E: Textbooks.

S: this past year with the textbooks. So with the science textbooks standards.

E: Kansas. Georgia. Every couple–yeah, every year or two it's a new state. They move around they test different waters but thankfully they continue to largely fail.

J: I don't know if I totally agree with you guys. I mean, I think, just the fact that they were even considered in what they were basically trying to do. I mean, they caused a lot of trouble.

R: Yeah, but in every major battle they have lost.

S: If we think about it this way, where were they 10 years ago and where are they now? Have they really advanced their cause. I don't think have. I think they've basically lost the last decade. Not that they're–you're right Jay we vigilance. They're causing mischief. They are continually–they have resources and they're looking for new strategies all the time, but I don't think they've advanced their cause. Certainly the science has relentlessly gone against them. They haven't really come up with anything new or interesting to say.

J: What about that creation museum in Kentucky? They came up with that. 

S: Yeah. It's basically. It's a laughing stock. They're doing a good job catering to their core. Which is easy. That doesn't advance you're movement. They're just now stroking their core. That's basically all their doing.

R: Let's as Kent Hovind if he thinks the decade was a good one or a bad one.

(laughter)

R: Oh, wait. We can't, because he's in jail.

E: Kent Hovind, also know as 655321.

?: (inaudible) 321

=== Ufology (43:03) ===
S: Okay. What about Ufology?

B: I think they didn't make hardly any ground. I put them in the loser category for this past 10 years.

J: Yeah, me too.

B: First off, digital technology really hurt them because everybody's got a camera these days and still it's the same old crappy video and images. There's no real in your face, "Holy crap look at that" type of thing–

S: Yeah.

B: which is what you'd expect with so many camcorders and cameras all over the place. And, Steve, you made a good point in your blog about it that they didn't come up with any new twists this decade. The kidnappings or abductions or–

S: Yeah. Previous decades they've added alien abductions or alien implants or something. There was really nothing new that I could think of.

B: Yeah.

S: No new twist on the mythology. They didn't really advance the mythology at all.

R: Well, and to build on Bob's point about digital technology hurting them I think it also hurts them in another way. Not just that there's a lack of evidence considering that everyone's walking around with a camera, but also, everyone's walking around with a camera and they actually are taking photos and things of odd phenomena–

E: Smoke rings–

R: such as–or like the mysterious swirls over Russia–

E: Right.

R: or whatever it was.

S: Norway.

R: Norway.

S: Norway spirals, yeah.

R: Right. So a lot of people got that on film and so people were able to look at it, examine it, and then explain it. Missiles and whatnot. So, I think it hurts them, too, because it's easier than ever to investigate these things.

B: And another wrinkle on that is the appreciation I think of easy it is to fake any of that. People look at it and their first thought is gotta be, "Alright. Now that could have been faked using whatever." Photoshop or other digital technology to make it look convincing but still be very fake.

S: Know what's the funny? The half a dozen or so times I've blogged about this issue and say essentially there's no smoking gun evidence of alien spacecraft, there's not good videos, no good photographs–

J: Yeah.

S: Invariably somebody shows up in the comments and say, "No good videos? You're just not looking hard enough. Look at this." And then link to some total crappy video. It's just happened today–

J: Just today.

S: we were linked to a video of this blurry blob dangling from a string. I mean, really?

(laughter)

S: We have a different definition of compelling evidence.

E: Plan 9 from outer space.

J: But look at this. This is the best we have.

ML: Or that video of the alien in the window.

E: How much is the alien in the window?

B: Oh my god. Remember that?

S: That was this year. We need to mention that, as well. That guy now is pushing forward this–the proposal to get–

B: The committee, yeah.

S: Denver to spend money on a committee for alien relations.

E: Denver. Oh, what a waste.
=== ESP Research (45:54) ===
S: Alright, next topic. ESP research.

B: Nowhere. They got nothing.

S: I think you've got to put them in the loser column, too, this year, because essentially, again, no new paradigm of research and they've basically admitted that, "Yeah, the results are not reproducible and we have nothing." That's like the big conclusion of all the research that's been done. They really–they don't have anything.

E: All margin error, within the noise levels.

S: Yeah.

E: That's where all activity takes place.

S: They came up with the notion of the decline effect. The decline effect means that the better the research you do the effect size declines. Until it disappears.

R: Right.

E: Hey, welcome to science.

(laughter)

B: Welcome to science.

S: They're trying to say this is a feature of ESP.

J: Oh my god.

S: Rather than a feature of the research.

B: So it's nonexistence is a feature. Nice.

S: Yes. It's inability to document–

R: It's not a bug. It's a feature.

B: Are you kidding me? They're basically saying, "The harder you look, and the less proof you find the harder you look, that's proof."

S: That's part of–

R: Yeah.

S: that's just like saying, "Bigfoot can become invisible and travel interdimensionally. It's just like saying fake acupuncture works too."

R: "Your skeptical energy is disrupting the thing."

J: Wait a second. I see a pattern there.

(laughter)

=== Bigfoot and Cryptozoology (42:28) ===
S: It's all post hoc rationalization as to why the science is invalidating your pseudo-science. Alright. Bigfoot and cryptozoology?

B: Oh, come on.

J: Oh, god.

S: They're nowhere.

R: Continues to be a joke.

B: The biggest thing that happened to Bigfoot was a frozen rubber suit. There you go.

B: A frozen rubber suit.

R: Yeah. That made them all look completely ridiculous. As if they didn't already.

S: A cop who got fired from his job.

B: What made it cool was the suit was from one of my favorite Halloween websites.

E: Costumeurs. 

B: Merchandise websites. Horror dome!

J: I'll never forget that when, Bob–

B: That's a great website.

J: when Bob first saw the costume unfrozen he calls me up and he goes, "I know what company made that, and it's awesome."

(laughter)

B: It's a high end Bigfoot costume, absolutely.

E: Who made the pig guts that they poured all over the costume in the Styrofoam container.

B: That was real stuff. They used some real roadkill didn't they?

R: There was possum DNA in there. Nobody thinks about the poor little possum.

E: Headline read, "Bigfoot Related to Possum." "DNA Concludes"–

S: This was the decade that the surgeons photo was revealed as a hoax in a deathbed confession.

B: Yep. That's right. I forgot about that.

S: Of the Loch Ness monster. The famous Loch Ness monster photo, also called the surgeons photo.

E: The plank of wood.

R: And also with the Bigfoot footage, the famous Paterson film–

E: Oh, the Paterson film, yeah. That was also–

R: someone took that and overlapped and overlapped the frames so that–they steadied the camera to make it look like it was obviously a person walking.

S: Yes. Yeah, right. And we also have to mention on the other side that skeptical scientists investigating this area, Joe Nickell in particular, have made some advances. They've figured out that a lot of sea monster sightings are probably schools of otters swimming in formation.

R: Yeah.

B: Oh, yeah. Right. Excellent. Good one, Joe.

=== New Ageism (49:13) ===
S: Alright. Next category, New Ageism.

B: Ooo, that that–

R: So that's kind of an open category.

B: I think it's–

J: I think it's doing fantastic. It's getting into our healthcare.

R: Well, yeah, that's what I was going to say. If you include alt med in new age then I would say they're winning. Yeah. Or they're better off now than they were 10 years ago.

S: Well, I think they're winning even if you set aside alternative medicine as a separate issue and if you look–there was a recent–we'll probably discuss this in more detail in a future episode{{link needed}} but there was a recent Pew Forum survey looking at a number of belief systems. One was have you ever had a religious or mystical experience and that was skyrocketing from 19562 at 22% saying, "Yes," to 2009, 48% saying, "Yes."

B: Wow.

S: More than double. And the last the decade's a very steep incline up.

J: Blame the counterculture.

S: Yeah. The general sense of mysticism and spirituality and new agey type of beliefs I think are–were advancing their cause in the last decade, in a number of ways. Yeah, alt med only being one of them.
=== Ghosts (50:22) ===
E: You know what else when on the rise, I think, in this decade? I don't know if it was on your list–you were gonna bring it up but ghosts.

S: That's the next one on my list, Evan.

B: Yeah.

S: Ghost hunting–and I agree, and I think that the success of Ghost Hunting as a belief system is entirely due to reality TV.

B: Yep.

ML: Those plumbers.

E: Absolutely. So many TV shows out there on this ghost stuff.

B: I got a list. Ghost Hunters. Paranormal State. Ghost Adventures. Most Haunted, not to mention Medium and Ghost Whisperer.

S: And the G Hunters, don't forget them.

B: Oh yeah.

ML: The G Hunters.

B: Right.

E: I've only seen one episode, though.

B: I think this is transitory, though. I think these aren't going to last that–cause how many times have I seen a preview where all–their main evidence for the week is somebody saying, "Did you hear that?" or, "Something touched me," and that's it.

S: Yeah.

R: I don't know. People–Are people still watching those?

B: I guess.

R: Like is there anyone out there that's still watching that going, "Ooo! Scary."

E: They do. I overhear talk in my office. We've got 40-50 people in the office and at least 3 or 4 of them on any given week–they weekly tune into these shows and–

S: Well, what do they say about it Evan? What is there to say? "Did you see that guy really scare himself?"

R: Right.

E: Exactly.

(laughter)

E: That's what they should be saying but no, they have no clue. They're all caught up in–

B: "Did you see that anomalous infrared image?"

(laughter)

E: It's adults who like to scare themselves. That's all it is.

S: They need to find another hobby.

E: Yeah. Try masturbation.

B: Why? Steve, they're getting rich off of that hobby.

S: I'm talking about the viewers.

R: Viewers, right.

(laughter)

B: Nevermind.

S: No. You're right. For them it was unbelievable. But, I agree, this is going to run it's cycle and it will go away.
=== Paranormal (52:04) ===
S: What about just the paranormal in general?

R: Paranormal in general? I–

S: Anything paranormal.

B: I'd give it an increase. Slight uptick, maybe.

R: I don't know. I'm going to call this one even.

S: Yeah, I think I'm with you, Rebecca. I think it's even.

=== Scientology (52:19) ===

J: Alright. I'll throw another one out there. Scientology.

R: Definitely down.

ML: Oh yeah.

S: They're way on the wane.

J: I don't agree. I don't agree.

S: Their numbers, Jay, their numbers on the wane.

R: Their numbers are dropping.

J: According to who?

R: More and more mainstream–St. Petersburg Times runs a weekly Scientology watch now. Anonymous. All of their skeletons have been dragged out of the closet at this point and they're a total joke.

E: And France has all but illegalized them.

B: Jay, I got two words for you man, couch incident.

(laughter)

B: You know when Tom Cruise jumped on that couch on Oprah and all the other stuff that he said he made Scientology an absolute joke. And did you guys know–I didn't realize this, that there was a common expression called "jumping the couch", kind of like when a TV show jumps the shark.

ML: Jumps the shark, yeah.

B: Used to describe someone going off the deep end in public. Jumping the couch. How awesome is that? I think he hurt Scientology more than anything did because he's so high profile. He was their #1 guy and everyone thought–he went from being at the top box office sensation really, in the world, one of the biggest guys to being a joke. Like, this guy is crazy and something's wrong with him.

S: Don't forget the South Park episode.

R: Yeah.

B: Oh, yeah, the closet.

S: Which–the thing about Scientology, like any cult–

B: Right.

S: is that it trades on secrecy. It advances itself by not letting people know what they really believe until you're deep on the inside. Once that information gets out, once people realize that Scientology is all about this guy Xenu and alien spirits it loses a lot of their ability to advance itself. So I think that's hurt them and those are the kinds of things that once the genie's out of the bottle it's out. So, I've think they've had to actually–had some permanent harm done to them in the last decade. But speaking of South Park, those guys have to get mentioned as–

B: Yeah.

S: one of the real forces of skeptical goodness over the last decade.

E: Definitely.

ML: Oh yeah.

E: Without a doubt.

B: Even though they might not want to put themselves into that group.

S: They don't like labels.

B: No.

S: They don't like labels. Cause they want to go after everyone equally.

B: Yeah. Everyone's fair game to them.

S: Yeah. Right.

=== Alternative Medicine (54:28) ===
S: What about–we mentioned alternative medicine already so let's talk about that just by itself.

R: Yeah. I think that's–

J: Yeah, they're winning this decade.

R: Yeah. Unfortunately.

E: It's on the rise.

J: Infiltrated big time.

R: Mostly with the anti-vax stuff, but also, I think, homeopathy.

J: Academia, from just the stories Steve has told it's getting down right scary what they're doing at universities. It's like, "Wow.

S: They certainly have made ground in the last 10 years. However, I think that they are–

J: Peaking?

S: they're peaking–

J: I hope.

S: and their–in the last decade I think they were cashing in on a lot of the ideological advances they made in the 1990's. The real shift was in the 1990's where fraud because alternative. That's where that shift occurred.

J: Right.

S: And now they're just running with that. And while they continue to gain ground with that I think also in the last 10 years now the counter movement is really organizing and there's now, I think, a scientific backlash forming against alternative medicine and again the way you take the wind out of the sails of movements like this is to expose it for what it really is. This is not about providing alternatives or integrating ideas or anything. This is just about selling fraudulent healthcare with a new flashy label. That's all it is. And once we make that point and really drive it home I think the whole appeal of alternative medicine goes away. So, that is hopefully we're starting to turn the corner there.

J: Yeah.

S: Maybe we'll have this chat again in 10 more years and we'll see how that goes but that's what it seems to me.

J: Hope you're right, man.

S: Anti-vaxxers won this last decade. Flat out. They went from nowhere 10 years ago to being a major movement with–causing a lot of mischief. All the numbers went in their direction.

B: And death. Don't forget death.

S: Vaccine compliance–

E: Gee. Good point, Bob. There's a direct correlation there.

S: Yeah. No, vaccine compliance is down and vaccine preventable diseases are coming back. And they are well funded, well organized, they have now celebrities on their roster. They hugely advanced their cause in the last 10 years. But again, I think there's a cycle to these things. There's–the backlash is happening and we are starting to get mainstream media who see them for what they are and–

J: And we have front line skeptics like Richard Saunders and Dr. Raichi  in Australia, where they have it bad, over there.

S: Yeah.

J: And they're doing a lot of good.

S: They're doing a lot of good work. There's a lot of organizations doing a lot of good work. Paul Offit–

R: Paul Offit.

S: yeah, has been sort of the tireless guy on the front lines taking a lot of personal heat for tirelessly fighting against the anti-vaxxers so he gets props for that.

E: Absolutely.

B: And also, Steve, we're seeing the outbreaks of mumps and measles and things. Things that we thought were gone for good. How long can the anti-vaxxers really last in the face of that? Imagine–and I think it's going to get worse in the next few years it's gonna get worse.

S: Yeah.

B: At some point people are going to be like, "Woah. Wait a second. Look what's going on." People are going realize the correlation here and isn't that going–

S: Yeah.

J: I hope so, Bob.

B: to really burst their bubble at some point?

S: That's what some people think. That when the vaccine preventable diseases really start to come back that will start to turn the tide against the anti-vax movement. We're trying to do it before it gets to that point.

B: Right.

ML: Yeah. It's just too bad it has to get to that point.

S: Yeah. Like the safety valve. Eventually, it'll get to that point. But, I also want to point out that the anti-vaxxers have advanced their cause in the last 10 years despite the fact that the scientific evidence has gone completely against them. 10 years ago there really wasn't much published about thimerosal. Now, 10 years later, we pretty much know it's not associated with autism. Every–there have been more that a dozen solid studies showing that there's no correlation.

B: Right.

J: I know, but Steve, the fear mongering gives them the win.

E: Move the goal post.

J: You can always pull people in with fear.

S: It's true, temporarily. I think, long run the scientific evidence works in your advantage.

R: Although it might not hurt if we campaigned with protests with signs that show exactly what someone looks like when they are stricken with polio.

S: Or dying from measles.

B: Want to know how good the vaccinations have worked? I don't even know what measles and mumps are. I don't know what they look like.

R: Yeah. And that's the problem, I think, is that a lot of people think of them like, "Oh, it's like the chicken pox. You have it when you're a kid. You get over it. It's fine." They don't realize exactly how debilitating these diseases can be. How deadly.

J: That's part of the problem. Yep.

=== Global Warming Advocates and Dissidents (59:18) ===
S: Okay. Next topic. Ready for this one?

B: Yeah.

E: Ready.

S: Global warming advocates and dissidents.

R: Oh, god. Can we just skip it?

J: Oh, god.

ML: Christ.

S: Who won the last decade?

B: I refuse to talk about it.

S: Who's making more ground. Is it the global warming advocates or global warming dissidents?

R: I think advocates only because–

J: Advocates.

B: The advocates.

E: Advocates.

R: talk about it. But, I think it's a close call because the opposition has been so vehement and like disturbingly so. And both sides are so politicized and there's horrible people on both sides. I mean, it's–

S: Yeah.

E: Look at the way corporations and governments are moving, though. The vector is towards solutions for global warming. So, I think in that sense, they're winning out.

J: Yeah.

S: I think I'm going to call this one a tie.

J: Really.

S: Yeah. I think so. I think that the global warming advocates certainly have been successful in setting the agenda and in talking about solutions to the perceived problem of anthropogenic global warming. Global warming dissidents have been very successful in promoting that there isn't a consensus on global warming. That the science is controversial, the science itself. That there's a conspiracy. Even if you–the very recent episode of climategate. They use episodes like that to cast a significant amount of doubt on the notion that there is anthropogenic global warming. So both sides, I think, have advanced their opinions and they're pretty much going head to head in the public arena. I don't know that I could give a clear victory to either side.

R: I think we're all going to lose. That's my pessimistic prediction.

E: Science is going to solve this problem. One way or the other.

S: I agree. I think while this debate rages the science will steadily advance and will solve the problem for us.

E: Yep.

R: I disagree.

E: I have total faith–

(laughter)

S: Not that I would say that I have faith that science will give us a utopia no mater what we do, but I do think that these problems are solvable. They're solvable by incremental scientific advance.

R: I don't disagree with that. What makes me disagree in general with the idea that it will win the day is not that I don't think that science can't come up with these–scientists can't come up with these solutions it's that the politicians and the corporations will implement them. But that remains to be seen.

S: Well, I think–I'll continue to disagree with you in this reason–for this reason. I agree with you that we can't count on politicians to do the right thing. Nor can we count on corporations to be selfless. I think the kind of technological advances that are going to improve the situation are ones that are win win. Ones that are advantageous to corporations and to people. When you can save money and also lower carbon footprint, you'll do it. So when those things come online people will do it. People will get light bulbs that use–

R: If it's not too late.

S: There's that question–

R: By that point the 3rd world countries will be–could be wiped out by drought. So, it's kind of a–

S: That's a question, that, yeah is a tough call. Extrapolating into the future in terms of–I think long term that we will fix this problem. Also, we can't–even though it may be too late in terms of how much CO2 we've already pumped into the atmosphere but we–I think it's possible we can come up with solutions even for that. Even–not just talking about putting less CO2 into the atmosphere going forward–

J: Removing it.

S: Yeah. Dealing with the CO2 that's already there. I think we'll be fine, is my opinion. But no one can predict the future.

R: I hope you're right.

E: Except for psychics.

=== The Skeptical Movement (1:03:20) ===
S: So, final category is the skeptical movement. Where are we now compared to 10 years ago?

J: I would say–

E: God bless the internet.

(laughter)

J: Well, look at what's taken place over the past 10 years. First of all, the podcasting universe took off and so did skeptical podcasts and we have a lot of people getting a lot of very good podcast programming. I think it's fantastic in this way and that we have the–now this whole medium didn't exist before.

S: Yeah.

J: Also, look at how TAM has evolved over the past–we're up TAM8 is coming up so over the past 7 years. We've all heard the story about how what the attendance was like at TAM early on versus today and the demographic has changed. And also just blogging in general, I think, is a good way to gauge how well skepticism is doing. I think we have larger numbers now, today–much, much larger numbers today that we did 10 years ago.

ML: Oh yeah. Definite winner in the last decade.

R: And in terms of battles won, if you look back over all the things we just went over, most of those are losing and I think that's because of the response from skeptics and scientists. I think it's an overall win in terms of more people getting involved not just the podcasts and the blogs as Jay said, those are very important, but they're–it's encouraging grassroots activism of a sort.

S: Yeah.

R: Getting people really involved and making a difference.

S: Absolutely.  If you think about the previous decade there was a lawsuit–a libel suit by Uri Geller against James Randi and–

J: Oh God. Remember?

S: then PSICOP. Without getting into the horey details  the bottom line was that even though the libel suit itself failed it was successful in intimidating the skeptical movement and keeping the skeptical movement more fractured than it otherwise would have been. It was a very successful lawsuit from the point of view of bullying and intimidation, even though it failed legally. You fast forward to this year, we talked about Simon Singh, and the response is very different. Rather the libel suits against prominent skeptics fracturing the movement and hurting us, we rallied behind Simon Singh. It strengthened us and it completely back-lashed against the BCA. And the difference there is that now we are much better networked and organized because of the internet and because we're a bigger, more vibrant, group. We definitely are younger. We have more energy and we definitely have our mojo. I think the last decade–this is an easy call was a huge, big win for the skeptical movement.

B: Yep.

E: Sí.

== E-mails of 2009 (1:06:14) ==
S: So, I pulled out two of–two e-mails that I got over the last year that stuck out. So, I'm going to read them very quickly and you guys if you have any that you wanted to quickly read.

J: Dear skeptics, you suck.

(laughter)

S: As typical we get a lot of feedback. We appreciate the feedback we get from our listeners. We read every e-mail even though, I regret the fact that we don't have time to answer every e-mail I promise you we do read every single one and it's still like 95% positive, I think, and 5% negative. Almost all the negative e-mails we got this year was over our coverage of climategate, actually. Just because that's such a politically contentious issue.

R: Yes. And we look forward to deleting your angry e-mails about tonight's episode.

E: Yes. In 2010 we'll be (inaudible).

B: Or we might save them for next year.

S: But we do love the positive feedback just because it does–it's helps us know that we're having an impact and that's important to keep us motivated to spend all the time and effort that we do in putting out this podcast. So, thanks to everyone who took the time to write us. But I do want to read a couple that stood out to me. Here's the first one. Actually, for some reason I don't have the name of the person who sent this in, but they wrote,
<blockquote>Hey. I'm a completely new listener to your program. My doctor actually prescribed a new drug for my anxiety and noticed that I had my iPhone with me at the consultation. From there he told me that it would be a good idea to sign up to your podcast. He also stated, and I quote, "These guys say that's it's your 'escape to reality'." I was really impressed that, one, I wasn't lectured by my doctor to get therapy, and two, my doctor related to me and gave me useful information in an attempt to find a way to make sense of the horrible bullshit that I had consistently feed into. This bullshit is fed to me by the mainstream media. I would like to express my thanks for your podcast in helping me make the first steps in overcoming my anxiety. However, I still am dealing with my acknowledgment of condition I understand it will never be cured.</blockquote>

R: A doctor prescribed us.

B: That doctor's awesome.

S: The SGU–we were prescribed as therapy for anxiety because we are "you're escape to reality."

R: Can we say, "4 out of 5 doctors recommend"–

ML: Do not operate heavy machine while listening to the SGU.

J: Yeah. Are we a controlled substance?

S: Will we have to be regulated by the FDA?

R: Actually, Jon Ronson told me that he listens to us while he falls asleep every night.

(laughter)

R: And I said, "Should I take that as a compliment or–" he's like, "No. It's just very soothing. Makes me fall asleep.

B: Oh my god.

R: So, yes, do not listen while operating heavy machinery.

J: Could you imagine? That conversation took place somewhere. Two people somewhere were like, "I think you really need to start listening." Really? To us?

(laughter)

S: Well, that was certainly an unusual e-mail. The second one is along a similar line. This is from Kiera Neil from Melborne, Australia, and she writes,
<blockquote>I am almost 13 and this year my dad has been playing your podcasts in the car. I have loved the show as much as he has complaining when I miss something and not wanting to stop when have to wait for the next one. I just wanted to tell you guys that thanks to your podcast my 7th grade science marks have improved amazingly. Just this year I have gone from 72% in my first test to 96% in the last. All because of listening to the podcast. Also, the 5x5 episodes have helped me understand so much. Rebecca you are my idol and I hope to be like when I grow up.</blockquote>

B: Oh my god.

R: Awww.

<blockquote>Your's sincerely, Kiera the budding skeptic.</blockquote>

R: Thanks awesome.

E: Awesome.

R: That makes me feel like I have a lot more awesomeness to do this year to keep up with that.

S: That's right. So not only can you prescribe the SGU for anxiety it will also get you 24% better grades in science class.

R: Can we get that put on Starburst stickers that we can put on the website? Guaranteed to–

E: Well, we were called one of the 15 podcasts that made you smarter.

S: That's true.

R: And also, Health listens to us. Which, you guys are old and– 

S: Yes.

E: Yes.

R: sad and don't but it's awesome!

S: I know that. No, I know that. Although, they think that you're not funny.

(laughter)

R: He did not say–

E: He insulted our humor.

R: They said all of us in general are not funny. So–

S: Really? That's not what I–

R: So–

S: Memories are so flawed.

R: F*** you, Health, but also, you're awesome.

(laughter)

R: I love you.

S: I love you! Go to hell!

?: We like the moon.

R: Can I read one of my favorite e-mails?

S: Yes. Go ahead.

R: It just came the other day. It's from–

(laughter)

R: It's from a listener named Jim who writes,–

ML: Oh yes.

<blockquote>The interview about the LHC was unfortunately what one would expect from a high school student trying to get by without research. Circulating kittens is not possible since you have to use charged particles. It's all magnetic steering and acceleration. It is a very uniformed and dumb question to ask an expert. It's frankly bordering on the insulting.</blockquote>

R: So, I just wanted to thank Jim for writing in to correct us. It turns out it is not, in fact, possible, to circulate a kitten through the Large Hadron Collider. Thank you.

ML: Thank you, Jim.

S: You would think, Brian Cox, who actually operates it, would have known that.

R: Yeah. It's weird that he didn't.

E: He mistook it for the Large Kitten Collider.

R: Right. That's what I was about to say, that–

E: Which is a whole nother device all together.

R: scientists are working on that.

E: He's got to get his facts straight.

S: Yeah. The LKC. Yeah.

R: Right.

S: It's an easy mistake to make.

R: Located beneath Cutopia.

S: That's going to be our first real t-shirt. The LKC. The Large Kitten Collider.

(laughter)

R: Can someone please make an animation that just show what that might look like?

E: Oh please.

R: Cause, I'd pay good money for that.

== Science or Fiction Statistics (1:11:57) ==
S: Mike, I understand that you have compiled some science or fiction statistics for us.

ML: Yes I have.

R: Don't. Uh oh.

E: Oo.

ML: Jay.

R: Now, I would like to say–did you split them up into before Rebecca started recording the podcast at 2 AM–

S: Oh please.

R: and after Rebecca started recording the podcast at 2 AM?

ML: No.

R: I believe that has had a significant effect on my performance.

S: There was too little data for subgroup analysis, Rebecca, so I'm just going to have to go with the meta-analysis–

ML: That's right.

S: of the whole year.

R: Fine.

S: So go ahead, Mike.

R: Go on.

ML: So in 2009 the Science or Fiction stats are as follows. At the bottom is Jay.

J: What?

ML: Yes.

R: That was good. You almost sounded surprised.

ML: Jay–you can look at it half full–glass half empty glass–Jay answered 50% of the questions right.

J: I'm actually shocked cause it felt like I got everything wrong.

R: That's better than average.

ML: Nope. You got half. And then Evan got 56%. Rebecca got 64.3%–

R: Yeah!

ML: and Bob, at the top, is 76.5%–

J: Wow, Bob.

B: 76.

ML: and I got 100%.

J: Yeah. That's cause you're playing by yourself.

R: Good job, Mike.

E: Yeah, ya know.

R: You always win when you play with yourself.

E: That's like a batter getting one at bat in a baseball season.

ML: The longest winning streak was Bob with 9 wins. He did that twice.

E: Nein.

S: In honor of the movie 9.

ML: Yes.

B: Twice.

E: Nein.

ML: That's right, Bob, twice.

E: Oh, that's 18.

ML: The longest losing streak was Jay, with 4. He did that twice, too. And the number of times that everybody lost was 7. The number of times where everybody won was 12. And I started counting–I didn't start counting until about July or August but starting in July or August the number of times Steve was called a bastard was 14.

(laughter)

J: Awesome.

S: So just 14, huh?

ML: Just 14, yeah.

E: 13 by Bob.

J: Thanks Mike.

E: 1 by Rebecca.

R: Thank you for compiling those, Mike.

E: Preciate it, man.

R: But I'm pretty sure that if you just take into account the first of the year I'm beating Bob.

B: Whoa whoa whoa, I don't think so.

R: I'm pretty sure.

ML: I can do that right now. Let me see.

R: Really? On the fly?

S: Really? You can test Rebecca's claim that fast can you?

(laughter)

R: It's okay. I just PayPaled Mike $20.

(laughter)

R: (inaudible) gear, Mike. 

E: I'll just Google it.

ML: No, it's still Bob. Bob had 75%. Rebecca had 73%.

R: Am I closer.

ML: 73.

R: See.

S: Oh, very close. But, still Bob is beating you.

R: 73. I knew it.

E: Close, but no cigar.

R: I took a nose dive. It's 1 in the morning for god's sakes. How am I supposed to answer your crazy fiction science questions?

ML: And Jay's still sitting at 50.

J: 50. I mean what?

R: Aww.

S: Hey, you chose to move to London. You chose your husband over the show, so pay.

R: I did not choose–No.

E: That is true. Yeah.

R: I'd like to correct on this point because it turns out free will is an illusion, Steve.

S: So you didn't actually choose.

R: I did not choose. There is no "me" to choose.

S: The absence of free will is not incompatible with the notion of making choices.

R: Uh, it is, actually.

S: No, it isn't.

R: In this instance, because–

S: Because it serves your purposes.

R: Yes.

S: Okay.

R: Look, I would love to banter with you more, Steve, but it's 1 in the morning and I'm really tired, okay?

S: So, one other comment, do not e-mail us to tell us that this isn't the end of the decade.

R: Oh, god.

ML: Oh, jeez.

R: We don't want to hear it.

E: Or do and get it deleted.

R: I've already set up the filter in Gmail to just it right to trash.

E: Right.

S: We choose to end the decade this year. So that's it. And speaking of which that brings us to the end of our year and decade in review.

R: Oh. This was fun.

S: It was a lot of fun.

R: We should do this every week.

S: We should do this every year.

E: A lot–lot of fun. We should do this every decade.

== The SGU in 2010 (1:15:57) ==
S: I've been looking forward to the SGU in 2010. We got Nexus 2010 coming up April 1717, in New York. TAM8, DragonCon 2010, and then in November we're off to Australia.

R: Australia. Very exciting.

S: Which we are looking forward to.

R: And speaking of things that are happening this year, next Friday–Friday, January 8th, Richard Wiseman will be in Boston. Boston Skeptic's are hosting him at the Brattle Theatre. You can buy tickets on the Brattle Theatre's website or you can find out all the information at bostonskeptics.com.

S: Thanks to everyone for listening over the last year. Thanks to everyone who gave us a donation. We had a nice flurry of donations in the last couple of weeks. I guess people are making their pre-tax year donations.

R: We are still accepting them. FYI.

S: We are still accepting them.

E: Oh yeah.

S: But it helps keep the lights on and keeps the bandwidth going.

ML: It helps–

R: And thank you for the good rating on iTunes. Those are always lovely.

S: And for the podcast award. We appreciate that.

R: Oh yeah. We won a podcast award.

B: Oh yeah.

E: Oh yes. Our first major podcast award.

S: We are now an award winning podcast for the first time.

R: Did we get like a leg lamp or something for that?

B: A leg lamp.

S: We got a laurel and hearty handshake.

B: Hey Steve, I'd like to thank you for working your ass off again this year.

R: Yeah. Thank you, Steve.

J: Yeah.

S: Eh, you don't have to do that every year.

R: Once a year.

E: Steve, you're lazy. You're a lazy bum and you don't do anything.

B: We actually–we got an e-mail not too long ago where someone very explicitly was asking questions about how does Steve do it. How could he possibly get all that done. They think that there's some secret to it.

R: There's a quantum Steve from another dimension that jumped in and helped.

S: Right. And not the stoner, right.

ML: Well, you guys answered that two years ago{{link needed}}. Steve has a bunch of clones in the basement.

E: Dude.

S: Chained up, yeah.

B: Steve works a lot and plays very little. That's what it boils down to.

ML: Really? He's always on WarCraft. I'm always seeing–

B: Well, he's working while he's on there. It's hard work.

E: Exnay on the orcraftway.

== Conclusion (1:18:09) ==

S: Well, thanks to all of you guys for another year.

R: Thank you, Steve.

S: You guys put the hours in, as well.

ML: Thanks, Steve.

J: Our pleasure.

E: Well, thank you, Steve. It's been great.

S: And until next year and next decade, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

{{Outro119}}

== Today I Learned ==

== References ==
<references/>

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SGU Episode 252

2012-10-15T10:47:07Z

Sunny256: Minor typo fix

{{Editing required
|proof-reading = y
|}}
{{InfoBox
|episodeTitle = SGU Episode 252
|episodeDate = 12th May 2010
|episodeIcon = File:neanderthal3.jpg
|rebecca = y 
|bob = y 
|jay = y 
|evan = y 
|guest1 = M: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massimo_Pigliucci Massimo Pigliucci]
|downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2010-05-12.mp3
|notesLink = http://www.theskepticsguide.org/archive/podcastinfo.aspx?mid=1&pid=252
|forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php?topic=28063.0
|qowText = Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.
|qowAuthor = [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw George Bernard Shaw]
|}}

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

S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, today is Wednesday May 12th, 2010, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,

B: Hello

S: Rebecca Watson

R: Hellooo

S: Jay Novella

J: Helloooo

S: Evan Bernstein

E: I can't even try to top that, so I'll just let that be.

S: Ok

B: I hate you all

S: And joining us as a special guest rogue this week, Massimo Pigliucci

M: Hello there

S: or ''Mass''-imo, as we like to call him

E: ''Mass''-imo

S: Massimo, you have a unique distinction-

M: Alright!

S: -for our podcast, in that-

R: Just one

S: Just one. If we harken back to June 7th 2005, episode number three, you were our first interview on the show.{{Link needed}} 
B: Oh, cool

M: I was pretty young that time

(laughter)

B: Weren't we all

S: It was five years ago, yeah

B: Rebecca wasn't even ''born'' yet

R: (laughs) Hey

(laughter)

B: Steve, isn't 'unique distinction' redundant?... I'm just saying

S: No

R: He's just saying it before hundreds of listeners have the chance to say.

E: I was going to say, that's for the listeners to decide.

== News Items ==
=== Nonsense on Stilts (1:33) ===
S: So Massimo, part of the reason you're joining us at this time, is that you have a new book coming out called [http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/N/bo5812109.html 'Nonsense on Stilts']. And I believe you said the release date will be May 15th, which is the day this podcast goes up, correct?

M: How did you know the book was coming out? Oh, I told you, right.

S: Yes, you told me

(laughter)

S: You said (desperately) "Please have me on your show so I can plug my book!"

M: That's exactly right. Yes, it's be May 15th, although from what I hear, it is already available on Amazon and people have been ordering it.

J: What's it about?

S: Yeah, tell us about it.

M: Well the phrase 'nonsense on stilts' is actually an old one, it goes back to philosopher [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Bentham Jeremy Bentham], who used it to indicate things that he thought were atrociously idiotic or stupid. So it was not just nonsense, but really, really ''tall'' nonsense, nonsense walking on stilts. In particular, however, the book is about the complexity of the landscape that separates science from non-science, from pseudoscience. As you guys know, in philosophy, that's known as the demarcation problem, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper Karl Popper] thought he had a very easy answer to what distinguishes science from pseudoscience: if a hypothesis or statement is falsifiable, then it's science, it's scientific; if it's not falsifiable, it's not scientific. Turns out that that was a little bit too simple, and so the book explores the idea that in fact there is a continuum between things that are definitely and clearly pseudoscience, let's say astrology or intelligent design, things that are clearly and definitely science, let's say fundamental physics, or evolutionary biology. And then the really interesting stuff that is in between, which we don't know what to make of, or it's hard to make up our mind about whether it's science, or to what extent it is science, or not

S: Give me an example of something you think is right in the middle.

M: Well, for instance, at the moment, string theory would be right in the middle. Meaning that it is, as you know, it's fundamental physics, which is supposed to address a major problem in physics, which is the apparent contradictions in some realms of obligation  between quantum mechanics and general relativity. Now, those are two of, arguably, the best established theories in science, it's hard to imagine one of them is 'wrong', let alone both. And yet, when applied to certain problems, such as what happens inside black holes, or the very origin of the universe, they tend to give us very different answers. So string theory is one of several attempts that physicists have made over the last three decades or so to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity, and, as it turns out, it's a ''beautifully'' developed mathematical theory, it's the mathematical constructions are, which I don't even ''pretend'' to understand, are in fact, I'm ''told'', are very nice, very interesting, and very convoluted, ''except'' for the little detail that so far at least there is no way to test empirically any of the claims of string theory. So certain theories are compatible with everything we know about physics, but it hasn't made any predictions so far. They are critically untestable, which raises the question: if something, no matter how beautiful it is, if something does not make any critically testable predictions, is it science?

S: Yeah, We've had this discussion before with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michio_Kaku Michio Kaku],<ref>Interiew with Michio Kaku – episode 182{{Link needed}} </ref> and I've heard other physicists discuss it. This is something about which theoretical physicists ''can'' disagree. The problem that I heard, was not so much that it doesn't make ''any'' predictions, that it makes ''too many'' predictions, there are so many different formulations of string theory, that even if you disproved one of them, there's a thousand others lined up ready to go. So it can't be ''constrained'', in such a way that it can't be falsified.

M: Right. To some extent actually they're both true. At the moment, at least, the theory in any form doesn't make any predictions ''outside'' of what is already known, in other words, it makes a lot of post-predictions

S: Right

M: Right? So it explains a lot of things we already know, but that's true also of other theories in physics, such as the standard model. It is also true that string theory comes in hundreds and hundreds of different forms, in fact, possibly thousands of different forms, so it's really a family of theories. And there doesn't seem to be any way, even in principle, that no matter how good we get in the near future at providing new data, you know, gathering new data in fundamental physics, it doesn't seem possible, conceivable, that we will be able, ever, to discriminate between hundreds or thousands of different versions of the same theory.

S: Right

M: So that seems to be a big problem. Now, it doesn't mean necessarily, of course, that string theory is ''wrong'' in any particular sense. In fact, one of the books that famously criticizes the theory, which is by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_woit Peter Woit], is a mathematician and physicist, it's entitled 'Not Even Wrong'.

S: Yeah, right.

M: Meaning that we don't know.

S: Yeah we're not even wrong, we're suggesting it's not even a scientific theory.

M: Right

S: You have to be scientific in order to be wrong.

M: That's right

B: Well [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Greene Brian Greene], I heard a talk by him, and he said it's really not accurate to call it a theory, he refers to it as more of a hypothesis.

M: Yeah, That gets in to interesting- well, I was going to say- I was going to use the word 'self-restraint', but perhaps that's a little unfair. I mean, it gets to 'what is the difference between a theory and a hypothesis?'. Now, in philosophy of science, in theory is a general, broad construct, such as quantum mechanics, for instance. An hypothesis is a specific kind of- either a subset of a theory, or a specific type of predictions that are made from that theory. So, if Greene wants to consider string theory a ''hypothesis'', in that sense that would mean that it's not as comprehensive, and not as much as the ultimate theory of everything that it's supposed to be. But I don't think that's what he meant, I think he meant that's just a conjecture, it's just something that's in the workings. And that is fair, except that, as another critic of string theory pointed out recently, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Smolin Lee Smolin] who wrote a book entitled [http://www.thetroublewithphysics.com/ 'The Trouble with Physics'], string theory has been a working hypothesis for about three decades, and the question at this point is fair to ask, you know, how much longer is it gonna be working before it actually produces results that are seriously and critically testable?

S: Right, but I think the counter to that is 'it's just really hard, so what if it takes 100 years, that doesn't mean it's not science. It just means this is intractable given our current our current state of science and we just- we need to wait for further advances before we can really even know if it will pan out as a scientific theory.

M: Fair enough, yes, never say never in science, right?

S: Yeah

M: You can never say 'well, this is definitely the wrong way to go', because then the following week, some smart alec publishes a paper in Nature, and shows that you're wrong.

S: Right.

M: Correct, so that's a good point. But the point that Smolin is making, for instance in his book, I find it interesting, and it really deals more with the sociology of science, not as much with the philosophy of science. And the point is this: string theory has been so successful as an academic endeavour, that so many people are absolutely convinced that the theory is so beautiful that it really ought to be true – which incidentally is an interesting criterion, because it's an aesthetic criteria for science-

S: The argument from elegance

M: That's right, the argument from elegance, right? Which carries a lot of weight with physicists in particular, even though, actually, the history of science shows that a lot of beautiful physical theories have actually been disproved. But never mind that. The thing is, string theory has been so successful as an academic endeavour, that for many, many years, pretty much anybody who wanted to have a serious career in fundamental physics had to be a string theorist. Most of the positions, funded positions, were devoted to hiring string theorists, most of the grant money that was given by, for instance, the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation National Science Foundation], was going to string theory. So a fair question is to say 'well, yes, it may take you a hundred years, maybe it's a little too early to reach a conclusion, but how about we spread out our bets?'

S: Yeah

M: And fund other approaches, which-

B: Absolutely

S: Yeah, that seems perfectly reasonable. I think we should probably tell our listeners at this time who you are. Now, you've been on our show before, but for those who don't recall, you are actually a professor of philosophy, right? At City University of New York.

M: As of last year, yes

S: Yes, and you are the author of the [http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.co.uk/ 'Rationally Speaking'] blog, I think you have other guest bloggers there too, but you're the primary one writing for that blog, and also one of the hosts with Julia Galef of the [http://www.rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/ 'Rationally Speaking'] podcast.

M: That's correct

S: Which is the official podcast of the [http://nycskeptics.org/ New York City Skeptics]

M: Yes, and we're having a lot of fun doing it, and pretty soon we're gonna have all of you as guests. One at a time.

S: (laughing) One at a time? Ok

R: Promises, promises

(laughter)

S: I've been listening to it, it's great, I think you're doing a good job

M: Thank you

S: Well let's go on to some other news items, we're gonna actually be coming back to this point on the demarcation problem a little bit later, when we talk about Sam Harris. But first, let's do some other news items

=== Definition of Siphon (11:11) ===
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/may/10/dictionary-definition-siphon-wrong The Guardian: Dictionary definition of 'siphon' has been wrong for nearly a century]

S: Did you guys hear that the Oxford English dictionary was wrong, had the wrong definition of the word 'siphon' in it for the last 100 years?

J: I'm outraged

S: Yeah?

E: Non-cromulent

B: How stupid are they?

R: Down with this sort of thing.

S: And-

J: Who dug down and found this one, Steve?

S: -and even worse, pretty much every dictionary consulted, ''copied'', the Oxford English dictionary (OED), so this mistake was basically copied over and over again through most dictionaries. It was discovered by Dr Stephen Hughes, a physics lecturer at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. And- so, the term 'siphon' refers to the notion of siphoning off, or sucking a fluid from one body to another, just like draining some body of water by, you put a tube in there, you get the suction going, and then, once it starts going, it will continue to go. Now, the definition of how it works in the OED, and in most dictionaries, was that it was differences in air pressure, and if you hold the end of the tube below – the one that you want to drain ''to'', below the end that's stuck in the body of water, the differences in pressure will push the fluid along and cause the drainage, which is simply ''not'' true.

R: Well, differences in 'atmospheric pressure'-

S: Yeah

R: But there is no difference in atmospheric pressure at such short distance, so it doesn't really make any sense. Actually, when I was in grade school, I learned how siphons worked, and I didn't realise the dictionaries had it incorrect, it's actually just due to gravity. Once you have the fluid going, if you have one end lower than the other, gravity, that's the force at work causing the fluid to flow through the tube, and then that creates suction, right? Cos if the water flowed down the tube and nothing came in to fill it, it would cause a partial, or total, vacuum in its wake. So gravity is the initiating force, and then-

B: Initiating?

S: Gravity's the force that moves the water down

B: Right

R: Sucking, is the initiating force

S: And then it's the resistance to the creation of a vacuum that then draws the water up to continue the process, right? So-

R: The reason why I mentioned- why I clarified atmospheric, that it's not atmospheric pressure, as that's what's in the dictionary, is because it ''is'' hydrostatic pressure.

B: Hydrostatic, right

S: Yes

R: So it is a kind of pressure, it's just not atmospheric

S: Yeah, not atmospheric, right, but the OED had atmospheric pressure as the explanation

B: Right, one guy had a great example, because a lot of people are still saying 'well, it's a combination of pressure and gravity, because you've gotta create some pressure differential to get it going, and then gravity takes over. One guys said, all you really need to do is put that tube in the water that's at a higher elevation, fill it with water, put a stopper in it, and then take that stopper, take the end with the stopper, bring it down to the lower container, remove the stopper, bam, you've got your siphon going with no sucking needed to get it started. So that's a great example of how you can get it going, showing that it's purely gravity, it ''seems''-

S: Now, where atmospheric pressure comes in is when you're sucking something up ''against'' the gravitational gradient, right? So if you're drinking milk out of a straw, you suck at the high end of the straw that's in your mouth-

R: Well otherwise you'd be rather wet

S: You would be. That creates a vacuum, or partial vacuum, and ''there'', what's pushing the milk up the straw is the atmospheric pressure pushing down on the surface of the milk, which is greater than the pressure inside the straw, because you've just created a partial vacuum. Now there are those who argue that the same thing is at work, the same principle is at work in getting the water to go ''up'' the segment of the siphon before it gets over the top, and then gravity pulls it down, and that is actually a legitimate point. So it ''seems'', in reading about this, that there are a number of explanations for what the real driving force is on a siphon, and that can include – there is at least one contribution to – atmospheric pressure, although not the difference between the two ends of the tube, the difference in pressure ''inside'' the tube, that pressure gradient goes toward the lower end of the tube and that causes the water to flow. And that is contributed to by the atmospheric pressure on the surface of the water. Now, there are those that claim a siphon will work in a vacuum, although I was unable to find any empirical evidence of that, and several people pointed out that in a perfect vacuum, a liquid would evaporate really quickly, and therefore they're not sure how you could test that. But still there are others who say that the primary force is the ''tension'' between the water molecules, that you could treat water like a long piece of string, or a chain that's connected, so that when one end flows down, it ''pulls'' the other, it pulls the rest of the chain up, it's pulling the rest of the water up. So here's one way to resolve which of the two forces is more important: atmospheric pressure has a limit, it can only, you know, one atmosphere could only push water up a gravitational gradient about 10m, or 30 or so feet, 34 feet. It turns out that you can't siphon something greater than 10m up. If you have a reasonably sized tube, and you try to siphon, if the uphill component of that side, even if the other end goes below it, if the uphill component is greater than 10m, it won't work. ''Unless'' you have a really thin tube. If you have a really thin tube, you ''can'' get higher than 10m, because it's thin enough that the cohesion, the tensile strength between water molecules, is enough that, even when you're getting in to essentially negative pressures, you can get higher than what the force of atmospheric pressure can get to. So actually, I think in the final analysis, there's still a little bit of controversy about this, and there are contributions from both the atmospheric pressure and water tension with gravity being the driving force on the down-hill gradient, but what's drawing the water up is a combination of atmospheric pressure and water tension.

E: This is so much more easy to grasp than string theory.

(laughter)

M: So it appears, but don't you think that the real story here is that it took 100 years to figure this out? To find the error?

S: Exactly! I agree, this is kinda like a high-school science kind of mistake, or misconception, but the interesting thing is that it was not discovered for 100 years. Partly because everyone was content to copy the world's authority on the English language, the Oxford English dictionary and that-

B: Argument from authority

R: Yeah, and because everybody who knows what a siphon is, doesn't need to look it up in a dictionary. Everybody who doesn't know-

S&R: -doesn't know

J: Yeah, but how many times did eyes pass over that, right? How may people over the past 100 years had to read that and then re-publish it in another book? A ''lot'' of people looked at that, and it just got looked-over for 100 years.

R: And it's a dictionary too, not an encyclopedia, so the people who are editing it aren't scientists, they're editors, they're specialists in the English language

M: Right, but it's still interesting that this thing has been ''copied'' so many times. Because, yes, the Oxford, of course, is supposed to be an authoritative source, but that's the point, when you write something, like a new dictionary, you're not supposed to just trust somebody else's sources, no matter how good those sources are supposed to be. I don't think this is limited to dictionaries. I think a ''lot'' of stuff, for instance, I see a lot of textbooks in science that just copy ''freely'' examples and figures and tables from each other, and then it takes somebody to take a look at it and say 'oh no, wait a minute, that figure is wrong' and it turns out it's been wrong across many years, and across many different textbooks.

S: That's exactly right, in fact I remember reading an essay by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_j_gould Stephen Jay Gould] in which he did a little investigation. He found that some majority of science textbooks were using the same very specific examples, which could ''really'' only be explained by just outright copying. For example, they compared the size of a hieroglypherium, the first horse, to that of a terrier, a dog. Why would that particular breed, there's no particular reason you would choose that breed as a comparison, but he found like 80% of the textbooks used that example, they must have just copied it forward, and copied it forward. So that's a real problem, it's just really ''laziness'', you know?

=== Neanderthal Interbreeding (20:45) ===
[http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/science/05/07/neanderthal.human.genome/index.html CNN: Neanderthal genome shines light on human evolution]

S: Let's go on, Bob, you're gonna tell us about Neanderthal DNA.

B: Yes I will. It now seems clear that, apparently, that modern humans, being the lascivious monkeys that we are, interbred with Neanderthals 50- or 60,000 years ago. Now, we know this not because of some ancient cave painting porn, but because most of us actually have Neanderthal genes in our very DNA.

S: Oh, I was hoping for the ancient cave-painting porn, myself

B: No, still looking for that.

R: I was looking forward to seeing that

(laughter)

B: For the record, "Neander-''tal''" and "Neander-''thal''" are both accepted pronunciations, so please don't send emails on that.

S: Yeah

B: So, this landmark scientific achievement, it was recently announced after a four-year effort by scientists at the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck_Institute_for_Evolutionary_Anthropology Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology] in Leipzig, Germany, and universities around the entire world. Now the fact that they could reconstitute 60% of the genome from people that were dead tens of thousands of years is amazing, if you wanna call them ''people'', which I think is appropriate.

S: Sure

B: They did this by first grinding pieces of bone from three separate Neanderthal individuals, and then they had this bone dust, and then you kinda have to wade through all the modern DNA that contaminated it, just from handling, and all the bacterial DNA. I'm sure that that was in there as well, and just to find the Neanderthal DNA. So that was quite a tour de force just to get to that point. ''Fortunately'', ancient DNA chemically degrades in a predictable way, and that allows this software that they've developed to detect it and correct for it. So that's how they were able to put all this together. They then compared this Neanderthal DNA to modern European, Asian, French and Papua New Guinean DNA, and finally they compared the DNA ''also'', and more importantly, to western and southern Africa, individuals from western and southern Africa. And they found that 1-4% of the Neanderthal DNA was part of all this DNA, except the African DNA. So everyone that was European or Asian, or French or from Papua New Guinea, they all had a little bit of Neanderthal DNA, except the Africans. Now, the most likely interpretation of this data that makes sense, is that after modern humans left Africa, part of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern_humans 'out of Africa'] hypothesis or theory, but ''before'' they could really separate and colonise the world, they interbred with Neanderthals, 60- to about 80,000 years ago, somewhere within there, probably in the mid-east, mixing in their DNA, which we can now see in probably billions of people. So that's basically the idea, you had an outflow of humans, of modern humans leaving Africa, but before they could essentially colonise the planet, they interbred with Neanderthals, which is why-

M: I bet it was mostly the French that did it.

(laughter)

E: Oh!

R: Alright

B: Fortunately, the French didn't even exist back then

(belch?)

B: Aw, man, that was good

R: Nicely done, Evan

S: I can't think of any other interpretation but that

B: Yeah, I can't either, it just seems like a natural conclusion

J: Bob, I have a question

B: Yeah

J: So that means that we're close enough to them genetically that we ''could'' breed with them?

S: Oh sure, I mean, that's not-

B: That's actually an interesting point. Some people, I'm sure, will say 'well, how could two species mate and produce fertile young?'. Well, actually, and this is interesting, the designation of Neanderthals has gone back and forth over the years. For ''decades'', for the first 50 years after their discovery, or the first 50 years of the last century, most scientists considered them to be completely separate species, which is kind of a fuzzy concept anyway, but they call them Homo neanderthalensis. But lately, in the past few decades, scientists have been kinda thinking that they're more of a subspecies of Homo sapiens, and they call them Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, so my guess is that this latest research will solidify them as more of a subspecies to us, rather than a separate species.

S: Or, you know, it's more accurate to say that we're ''both'' subspecies, not that ''they'' are a subspecies of us.

B: Which is true, because they were around before we were, then maybe we should call ourselves Homo neanderthalensis sapiens, you know? Maybe we're a subspecies of them. And just the term subspecies, Steve, correct me if I'm wrong, that's more of a ''race'', right? Kinda just like a race of humans.

S: Bob, it blends seamlessly one into the other

B: Right

S: It's all very, very fuzzy. The difference between a population, versus a race, versus a subspecies, versus a species is a continuum.

R: It might be closer to think of it as a ''breed'', because of, like a dog breed. The difference between dog breeds is substantially more different than the difference between human races.

B: Yeah, I like that, but they're still the same species, yeah

M: It really depends on which definition a species one takes, there are several in biology, the one we've been implicitly referring to is the so-called biological species concept, which is this idea that if you interbreed, then you're part – and you can produce fertile offspring – then you're part of the same species. If not, you don't. But that concept of species is actually quite fuzzy, and it applies differently to different groups of organisms. To give you an extreme example, in a lot of plant species, and even in some vertebrates, there is quite a bit of inter-crossing between so-called species. Just think of orchids, for instance. So, just because things can interbreed, organisms can interbreed, that doesn't mean that they necessarily belong to the same species. As far as races versus populations, versus subspecies are concerned, that all depends really on who you ask, in terms of what view of systematic biology they take. Now, as far as humans are concerned, race is really an extremely fuzzy concept that has almost no biological grounding because there's been a lot of interbreeding within Homo sapiens, and so there is almost nothing that you can really say meaningfully about- from a biological perspective, not culture obviously, about- races are certainly no subspecies of humans at the moment, because a subspecies, as most of biology think of a subspecies as an incipient species, as a species that is about- as a population that is about to form a separate species. That may be what the Neanderthals were, you know, close enough to be a different species, but not quite.

S: (agreeing) mm-hmm

B: Right, good points

S: Yeah, even when you have two species that have ''clearly'' separated, they have separate populations that are different enough, either geographically or culturally, behaviourally, whatever, that they are ''mostly'' not interbreeding, and they're definitely on their way to becoming completely separated species. For a while, they will still occasionally exchange DNA. Remember a couple of years ago, there was the news item that analysis showed that human- about a million-

B: Yeah, chimps

S: -years after the split between humans and chimps, they were still swapping some DNA back and forth. So, I think that's the same situation- 

R: How could I forget?

S: (laughing) with the same-

M: Because you're young, Rebecca

(laughing)

S: I mean, it always surprised me that Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalscould live for tens of thousands of years in Europe ''together'', and not be occasionally 'shacking up'. I mean, that is just human nature, if you will, and so makes more sense-

R: May be for ''you'', pervert.

(laughter)

S: No comment

(laughter)

S: Let's go on to the next item-

B: Wait! Wait, something just occurred to me, something just occurred to me

J: Wait, let me pull the horse out so you can beat it to death a little further, ok, go ahead

B: No, no, this is interesting, they say 1-4% of the genome, but I assume that the similarities that they found were protein-encoding parts of the genome, right? It's not junk DNA they're talking about?

S: Who knows

M: Not necessarily, I think this is a genome-wide search

B: Yeah, but it's-

M: It may not be just protein coding

S: I don't know if that's relevant

B: Hmm, I don't know, the impression I- it ''is'' relevant, because if it's protein encoding, then it would be a much greater percentage of the protein-encoding part of the genome, as opposed to the entire genome-wide, you know what I mean?

S: It would be a higher percentage of our ''genes''

B: Yes, that's my only point

S: Yeah

B: Yes, that's my only point

E: No, that's true, Bob

S: I don't know- yeah that's correct, but I don't know what the answer is

=== Evolution in Alabama Politics (29:28) ===
[http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0510/Alabama_candidate_denounces_lie_that_he_believes_in_evolution.html Politico.com: Alabama candidate denounces 'lie' that he believes in evolution]

S: Let's go onto the next item, have you guys seen the Alabama political ad?

B: Yeah

J: I felt like puking, yeah, it was horrible.

B: Ugh, disgusted. The tone in the of voice of that was-

(audio from ad, see video on [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlAjTQO11V0 YouTube])
:Male: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Byrne Bradley Byrne] was a Democrat
:Female: Now, he's a Republican
:Male: On the school board, Byrne supported teaching evolution, he says evolution best explains the origin of life? Even recently said the bible is only ''partially'' true
:Female: ''Candidate'' Byrne changed his tune
:Male: Legislator Byrne voted to raise property (fades out)

R: That's pretty terrible, I just- before we begin this I'm going to put out a request that we not use any southern accents in mocking this.

S: (plaintively) Oh, we can't use southern accents?

J: Oh man, that was my whole ''bit''

R: I know, I know, Jay

J: Wait, wait, only if Massimo does it, cos he's already got an accent.

R: Massimo's allowed

M: That's right, and besides, I spent nine years in Tennessee, so I think I have rights there.

B: Ha-ha!

R: You're fine, then

S: That's ''right''

R: Some of your close friends are southerners

E: Close enough

S: Right, so Bradley Byrne, obviously is a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor of Alabama, so this is a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_election primary race], just among Republicans. And his opponent is essentially accusing him of believing in evolution, and thinking that the bible's only ''partially'' true. Those are the accusations that are being made against him. Now, Byrne was so outraged by this that he has responded, saying that it's not true, that he in fact has supported teaching creationism in our school textbooks.

M: Well, good for him.

S: Yeah

R: And he says 'I believe that the bible is the word of god, and that every single word is true, so-

S: Every single word

R: Yeah

S: So, this says something about the state of the Republican party, and Alabama specifically, and I think more generally in the southern region of the United States. And I do think this is a bit of a change, I think in the past, candidates would certainly be open about their religion, but wouldn't make as a matter of ''pride'' their rejection of evolution. I think they would tend to be more coy about that, now it's really being- it's an open matter of pride in the election that they reject evolution and promote the unconstitutional teaching of creationism in textbooks. I mean he's not even reverting to any kind of academic freedom thing, he's flat-out saying teaching creationism in text books, which- what was it, 30 years ago? That the supreme court said that was unconstitutional.

R: Yeah, it's not just the ignorance that is so upsetting about it, but it's the celebration of the ignorance.

S: Yeah

R: It's the 'crowing' about the ignorance that really makes it difficult to deal with, and of course the fact that these are men who want to be in positions of power. It's quite disturbing.

J: What office is he going for?

S: Governor

R: Governor of Alabama

B: (inaudible) catcher

E: Governor of the state, yep, gotta appeal to your constituency

M: Yes, but do remember the ''spectacle'' of the Republican presidential candidates at the last turn around, where they were raising their hands if they believed in evolution

B: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Huckabee Huckabee], yep

M: Huckabee was right there

E: Yeah

M: Now, it's true that he didn't go on to win the nomination, but boy, that was pretty scary.

S: Yeah, although it was only, what, three out of ten or something? It was the minority, but there were definitely a few southern candidates who- that was their position, yep.

E: Hey, at least they're honest, right?

M: Well not necessarily, actually, because that's the other thing, it's not clear. I mean some of these people, I'm sure, are honest, and they really do believe this crap, but it's not really clear, because a lot of these people pander to whatever they think is gonna get them elected, and so -

E: That's right

M: -I'm not so sure that-

B: (mocking) Politicians?

M: (laughs) Yeah, exactly

E: (laughs)

M: (mocking) How shocking is that, right? So we're don't even know if they actually believe it. Not that really believe that creationism is a particular badge of honor, but at least if you're coherent with your beliefs, that's better than not.

S: A few of the commenters on the video said 'I was seriously hoping this was from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Onion The Onion]'

B: Ah

S: And I thought that was perfect, because this is ''exactly'' the kind of thing you can read in The Onion, you know, just that one notch beyond reality, satirical kind of thing. But now reality is sort of caught up with the satire, this really is indistinguishable from the kind of thing The Onion would run.

E: You know, sadly we come across that a lot in skepticism.

S: Yeah

E: More often, I think, than more average consumers of information

J: Yeah, you can't make up the stuff out- you know, nothing's as good as the stuff that's already out there.

R: That's what a poe is, P-O-E, it's anything that-

B: Edgar Allen?

R: -when you first read it you can't tell if it's satire or if it's real, cos the two have blended at this point.

S: Right

=== Science of Morality (34:39) ===
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/a-science-of-morality_b_567185.html?ref=fb&src=spyperlink Huffington Post: Toward a Science of Morality]

S: The next item, Massimo, I know you've actually written about as well. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Harris_%28author%29 Sam Harris] has written a very interesting article in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffington_Post Huffington post], of all places, called 'The science of morality'. And this has been a debate that's been going back and forth in the blogoshpere about- essentially the question is 'can you have a science of morality? Or is morality something that is simply outside of the epistemological limits of science?'. So, Massimo, what do you think about all this?

M: Well, I think that Sam Harris wrote a lot of interesting things, in that- in those articles, actually, he posted more than one thing; he posted on his blog as well as of course Huffington post. And I also watched the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TED_%28conference%29 TED] Lecture that he gave.<ref>[http://blog.ted.com/2010/03/22/science_can_ans/ Science can answer moral questions: Sam Harris on TED.com]</ref> There's a lot of interesting things, and in fact I tend to agree with ''most'' of his points, except for this most fundamental one which is- no, I don't think science, by itself, can answer ethical questions. And in fact his own examples are, I think clearly point that way and I don't understand why he doesn't seem to see the problem. But let me sort of summarize briefly what he said. So he's suggesting that 'look, moral facts are just a particular type of empirical facts, there are certain things that we can tell empirically make people, say, happy or not happy, that cause pain or pleasure, that make people flourish, or not flourish', depending on, you know, regardless of what your particular definition of flourishing happens to be. And he says that 'well, if that's the case, then what we can do is assign morality in a sense that science can empirically tell us what things are going to work in a certain way for human beings, and what things don't work. So what kind of societal structures, and societal rules, or rules of behavior, are going to have what consequences'. That is absolutely true, meaning that of course we can tell empirically what are the consequences of human actions, behaviors and societal structures involved. But that doesn't tell us anything about whether those rules or actions are right or wrong.

S: (agreeing) mm-hmm

M: See, in order to say you can make the equation, which Harris ''does'' make, between, say for instance, flourishing and right, and not flourishing and wrong, well, you already have to start out with a particular ethical theory of, in particular, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_ethics virtue ethics], which says that the right thing to do is what increases human flourishing. But ''that'' is only one way at looking at ethics, there are other ethical theories, and it seems to me that Harris started out with a particular commitment, you know, a particular philosophical commitment, which apparently he didn't even realise, and then from there, yes, it does follow that once you've made that commitment, science can inform a ''lot'' our ethical decisions.

S: But what do you think about his point, I think he addresses that there he says that may be true of ethics, but it's also true of any other science you can care to mentions, that you start with some first principles, and you can challenge those first principles the same way you can challenge any first principles that you're using as the basis for an ethical system as well.

M: You mean you can empirically challenge?

S: Or even philosophically, like, the specific example he says is if you're a physicist, you say 'well therefore physics is science because it's empirical , etc.', and he says 'yes, but who says empiricism should be the starting point, you're making a philosophical assumption there as well'.

M: Right, that's definitely the case, and it's an interesting case because of course commitment to empiricism or commitment to scientific realism, and all of those are philosophical positions, and not scientific, and can certainly not be explored within science. You have to make those commitments first, and then you're going to do one type of science or another.

S: Right

M: Or you're going to look at scientific theories in one way or another. So ''that's'' definitely true. But the thing with ethics is that no philosopher, ''modern'' philosopher, that I know of would disagree that it works in a similar way, meaning that there is a separation between your ethical commitments on the one hand, and the empirical information that you can use to inform specific questions.

S: Right

M: Right? I mean, in that sense he's not breaking any new ground. Again, it seems to me that he's unaware of a large philosophical literature in ethics; no modern ethicist I know of disagrees that science has nothing to say about our ethical choices, or the consequences of ethical choices. In fact, quite a bit of research recently in ethics deals with- it's done within an area of philosophy that sounds almost oxymoronic, it's called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_philosophy experimental philosophy]. Which most people think of experiment and philosophy as as far apart as possible. But as it turns out, a lot of philosophers have been engaging scientists and working together. The typical example, I think it's a beautiful set of examples that have come out in the last few years, are cognitive science studies of the so-called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem Trolley problems]. So the Trolley problems are a classic thought experiment in ethics, and these are situations like the following- actually, I'd like to run the Trolley problems experiment with you guys, so I'd like to know what you think about this; So imagine that there is this situation, that you're walking down the street and you see a trolley going out of control because of whatever, the brakes are not functioning or something. And you see it's about to hit five people, who are unaware of it, they can't move, they're gonna die. Now, you have the possibility, the option, of pulling a lever and putting the trolley on a different track. If you do that, however, you're going to kill one innocent bystander. The first question is, would you do it?

B: Do it, yeah

E: I guess I would do it, yeah

R: I think (inaudible)

J; You'd ''have'' to do it

M: (repeating) You ''have'' to do it

J: The net thing there is four lives.

M: Right, Ok, good. So, most people-

B: The needs of the many-

M: -agree with you guys, that in this version of the trolley dilemma, yes, you pull the lever and you save five people, you kill one. They're all innocent anyway, so you have a net saving of four lives. Now, imagine the second variation of the dilemma; same exact situation, the trolley's going down, it's about to kill five people, you don't have a lever at this point, what you have is a large man standing next to you on the bridge, and you actually have to push the man down so that he can block the trolley and stop it before it's going to kill the others. Would you do it now?

B: Aha! See, now you're getting tricky!

M: Yes

(laughter)

R: Did you ''not'' think he was going to get tricky at some point?

(laughter)

J: Well, I mean, you know, logic dictates that you do the same thing, yeah, you do, you sacrifice the guy, but there's the emotional aspect of it, which- my first gut reaction was, well then I'm a murderer, you know, cos I'm actually-

M: Right

J: It's ''different'', yeah, ok, I would like to think that I would be able to do it, even though there's a personal loss here for me.

M: Right

B: What if I threw myself? What if you throw yourself down

M: No, that's-

S: You're not big enough

M: -that's the funny thing that these are thought experiments, so the thought experimenter – in this case, myself – controls completely the experiment. No, you can't throw yourself, you can't yell, the people aren't listening to you, those are the conditions of the experiment. Now, what you guys just said-

J: Massimo, wait, what if I could throw Sarah Palin instead of the guy?

B: Oh god

M: Well, no, that's a different issue.

J: Ok, we'll talk about that later.

M: (laughing) We'll talk about that later. But the interesting thing is this, if you actually do the experiment, if you get together with a group of social scientists and you in fact do the survey, it turns out that most people react exactly the way you guys have reacted. That is, in the first version of the dilemma, most people agree that, yeah, you really have to pull the lever. And in the second version, most people say 'wait a minute, now I'm actually directly killing somebody, personally being involved in this thing and I'm not so sure that it's the right thing to do. Now, more recently, neurobiologists got into the act, and they showed that different parts of the brain are activated when you think about the two different areas of- the two different kinds of the dilemma.<ref>YouTube video by Massimo Pigliucci: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOfKyjyWiU0 Neuroethics & the Trolley Dilemma]</ref>

B: Cool

M: When you're talking about the first version, the lever version, it turns out that most of your response comes out of frontal lobe area, the cognitive, rational thinking areas of the brain. But when you're talking about the second version of the dilemma-

B: Limbic!

M: Yes. That pushed the guy in front of the trolley, then it turns out that the amygdalas and areas that are in charge of emotional responses are turned on, right?

S: (agreeing) mm-hmm

M: So, what have we done so far? We learned a lot about how moral beings make moral decisions, right? The neurobiol- we've learned something about the neurobiology of it, we've learned something about the sociology and psychology of it, all of this is very relevant. It still doesn't tell you, however, whether it's right or wrong to pull the lever one way or the other, yes? Now you guys said, even when we started out, we all said, because I would agree with that, in the first case, you actually ''have'' to pull the lever. But even that kind of apparently obvious and logical decision actually implies a particular type of ethical commitment that is of a philosophical nature. We're all essentially [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism consequentialists] here, or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism utilitarians]. That's the type of philosophy of ethics that would bring you to answer in that way. But there are other way of looking at the problem, there are systems of ethics, for example, the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology ontological system], which is a system based on rules like, you know, the classic example would be the ten commandments, it's an ontological system of ethics. Now some of those systems would say it's always wrong to actively cause the death of anybody, and so both in the first and the second case, you're actually wrong in interfering with the system. Other systems of ethics, like virtue ethics, which I usually tend to be sympathetic to, this goes back all the way to Aristotle, were probably to strike a compromise, and it would say 'actually, you know, your actions depend on- you have to really pay careful attention to the particular situation, and it does make a difference whether you actually actively or passively interfere with the situation, so that in the first case it's Ok to interfere, and in the second one it's not. All of this has nothing to do with the science. All of this has to do with whatever kind of philosophical commitment you have made to ethical issues, to ethical problems.

S: I agree with you, and I think that- let me get back to Sam Harris's essay a little bit and tell you where I agree and where I disagree with him. First of all, as you point out, he doesn't- he makes a point of saying that he hasn't read the philosophy of ethics. He hasn't read ethical philosophers because he doesn't want to get caught up in their jargon and their way of thinking, cos that would impede his ability to communicate this to the public. And I don't buy that, he kinda lost me there, because I think you ''do'' need to understand what the people who were spending their careers thinking about this or saying.

R: Yeah, we hear that same sort of sentence from the mouths of every 'free-energy' person on the planet.

S&M: Right

R: You know, and to me, it's very disrespectful of people who do this for a living. It's saying 'you know, you guys are too embedded, you can't see the forest for the trees, and I'm gonna come in and I'm gonna blow your minds'. And it's, yeah, I find this really disrespectful.

S: Yeah

R: Do the work.

S: Yeah, just don't let it bias you.

M: I took that kind of statement as, unfortunately, an example of intellectual arrogance on the part of a scientist, which is really too bad. Imagine what would happen if a philosopher were to say 'you know what, I just don't buy this quantum mechanical stuff, and I haven't bothered reading the technical literature, because I don't want to be biased. But I just don't think this is right, and I've got my own theory'.

S: Yeah, exactly

M: Come on, who would take that seriously?

S: Now, where I think he has a reasonable point, is where he says a lot of the criticisms of a science-based system of ethics is the notion that there is this demarcation problem, and that there are difficulties, as you say, with definition, and ''his'' point is that you run into the same problems with, let's say, medicine or psychology or psychiatry, that, for example, here's a very specific example: you may have difficulty defining well-being as your basis for an ethical system, but you also have the same problem defining health, as a basis for a medical system, or medical science. Which I agree with, the two definitions are fuzzy, and he is right. But I think he draws the wrong inference from that, he says 'therefore, a system of ethics is just as scientific as medicine is', but I think what he's missing is that medicine is not an entirely scientific endeavour. It is mostly scientific, but when we do get into issues, like what is the definition of health, we also run into personal and philosophical issues that are not answered by the science. The science only gets you so far, and then you have to make a personal decision with the patient about what they value. What they value may be different. So his analogy was correct, but he actually drew the wrong inference from it because he has a misconception about what medicine is.

M: Right, so you think his analogy essentially undermines his point.

S: Exactly, and what I came away from, was the notion that he was essentially labouring under this false dichotomy, that either you have a science-based system of ethics, or you have [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism moral relativism], and I think that there is something in between. You can also look at this, as I think you were getting at, Massimo, the sort of scientists' way of looking at this and the philosophers' way of looking at this, and my position would be, well, it's both, this is sort of a quasi-scientific, philosophical endeavour, where you can use a system of logic extrapolating from various principles, it could be informed by a lot of scientific information about the evolutionary underpinnings, or at least the neuroscience underpinnings of our moral thinking, and statistical consequences of the actions we take, etc. But at the end of the day, there's going to be some kind of subjective value judgment, and we ''further'' have to recognise, which he also acknowledges, but then I think draws the wrong inference, that different people make different moral judgments.

M: Right

S: You know, the science may explain why some people make one value judgment, and other people hold another. Maybe there is a genetic neuroscientific explanation for that-

M: Perhaps

S: -but it doesn't matter! It doesn't even matter.

M: No, it doesn't matter, right. But I wanna make a couple of comments about what you just said

S: Sure

M: It's, first of all, this idea that there is again a continuity between ethics and therefore philosophy on one hand, and science on the other, yes, absolutely. I mean, I wrote the technical paper a few years ago published in a journal called Zigon which is a journal about ethics, philosophy and ethics, which was entitled precisely the continuity between ethics and science.<ref>Massimo Pigliucci (2003) '[http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/zygo/2003/00000038/00000004/art00010 On the Relationship between Science and Ethics]', Zigon</ref> So, and this is a fairly well accepted point, as I said earlier on, by philosophers, but what we're seeing here in Harry's attempt, is the attempt to discard an entire tradition of thought, an entire way of doing things, and saying we got the answer because we've got empirical evidence. It’s a very simplistic approach. Now, the second point is, you're right, I got the exact same sense that Harris is really fighting against moral relativism, but the funny thing again there is that he's got very powerful allies within the philosophical community to fight against relativism, and he doesn't seem to be aware of it. There is an entire area of ethics which is called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaethics metaethics], and it's about the justification for ethical systems – how do we know about what is right and what is wrong, and how do we come up with this set of decisions in ethics. And most metaethicists are definitely ''not'' moral relativists, and give you very good reasons for why you don't want to be a moral relativist. But again, these are reasons of value, and they work within the logic of ethical systems, they're not necessarily empirical reasons. So it seems like Harris could have been much more productive in sort of reaching out and saying 'look, why don't we get together? Science has a lot to contribute to these issues, philosophy obviously has a lot to contribute to these issues, so getting together, we build something interesting'. But of course that would be not exactly the kind of headline-grabbing thing that has generated all this discussion.

S: I don't think he's grabbing for headlines, I think he honestly believes what he's saying. I think what's really driving him is this recoil from moral relativism, which he equates also with post-modernism, and I agree that there's a relationship there… He's come to the conclusion that the only way to get rid of moral relativism and post-modernism in this context is the science of ethics, of science of morality, then to expunge the philosophy from it, or to say that it plays no more of a role than it does in any other science, which I disagree with. So, I think that's where his core mistake was. Then he ''kind of'', yeah, I think he gives away his motivation away at the end of the essay where he specifically says, he brings it back to religion, saying that religion is used as an excuse for moral relativism, and the examples he gives throughout the essay on moral relativism about, say, female genital mutilation or wearing burkqas. He says he finds it amusing when philosophers try to justify these sort of things on the basis of moral relativism-

M: Right, but I don't understand who he is talking about, because I don't know of any philosopher (laughing) that is trying to justify genital mutilation. Again, it seems to me that this is an issue of Harris not seriously engaging with the literature before studying and writing his own stuff. He's talking- I have a couple of quotes from one of these essays that are pretty fantastic, he says something like that it's a common consensus among western thinkers that moral relativism is ok, that genital mutilation- Really? I never heard of this consensus, this is ridiculous. Yes, there is a certain number of, unfortunately, vocal people that are moral relativists, but to say that that's the standard view that western society has now adopted seems to be bizarre.

S: I agree, I think you and I have the same view on this, and a lot of it does stem from the fact that he's trying to address what is a very deep and nuanced issue without, as you say, first understanding how we got to where we are now.

M: Yeah, absolutely

S: Alight, let's move on to Who's That Noisy.

== Who's That Noisy (54:53) ==
S: Evan, can you play Who's That Noisy from last week?

E: Yeah, I absolutely can; here it is

(South-Asian speaker and music)

E: That was Sam Harris talking about-

(laughter)

E: I think we've beaten him up enough tonight. That was, ever heard of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramdev Baba Ramdev]?

S: I've heard of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Yaga Baba Yaga]

E: I have too, and Baba O'Reilly. If you happen by YouTube, have a look at Baba Ramdev.<ref>[http://www.youtube.com/user/babaramdev YouTube channel for Baba Ramdev]</ref> I mean sure, not everyone can speak Hindi, or whichever dialect he's speaking in these videos, but he has some titles here of some videos that he's made, such as 'Baba Ramdev: Yoga for obesity', 'Baba Ramdev: Yoga for high blood pressure', 'Baba Ramdev: Yoga for diabetes', 'Baba Ramdev: Yoga for physical elegance', and the ever popular 'Baba Ramdev: Yoga for constipation and piles'.

J: Piles of what

R: (dissenting noise)

M: Well, you know what

S: You had me right up to the last one. So the thing is, if you just think of it as- if you substitute 'exercise' for 'yoga', yeah, it will help obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and probably your aesthetics. The piles, I'm not so sure about.

(laughter)

E: Can you believe somebody got this?

M: Now, when you say 'yoga ''for'' diabetes' meaning this is yoga that actually ''causes'' diabetes? No,

S: It treats it

M: That's not he meant, I see. Oh, that's too bad, cos that would've been more original

E: According to Baba Ramdev, yoga is good for just about anything that ails you. It's on YouTube though, and someone actually answered this correctly, if you can believe it, and that was our listener Armit, from Vancouver, who sent in an email and said "No doubt, that's yoga guru Baba Ramdev", he actually met him a couple of times in India, so he had-

S: Wow

E: Yes, so he had the pleasure of meeting him, and therefore, he was ready for that Who's That Noisy, more than anyone else. So well done Armit, well done.

M: What does he win?

E: Oh,

S: Our admiration

E: A mention on the podcast

B: Yes

R: Our eternal admiration

S: He's immortalised on the SGU.

R: The envy of all his friends?

M: Ah, boy, you guys are definitely not into the material

(laughter)

R: Spiritual wholeness

S: On his deathbed, he will receive total cognisance

R: So, you know, he's got that going for him.

B: Which is nice

S: What have you got for this week, Evan?

E: For this week, Who's That Noisy is as follows:

(soft white noise with breaks)

E: Right, it may not have sounded like much to you

R: Really?

E: But it's something very specific, and I'll give you a hint: those of you who have been paying attention to your science and technology papers and articles and blogs over the last… month to six weeks might be able to figure out what that was, so…

S: So it relates to a recent science news item.

E: Good luck everyone, we'll talk about it next week

== Science or Fiction (58:29) ==
(jingle)

S: Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real, and one fictitious, then I ask my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. Is everyone ready for this week?

J: Ready

R: So ready

B&E: Yep

S: [http://www.demogr.mpg.de/en/news_press/press_releases_1916/marriage_and_life_expectancy_1813.htm Item number 1]: 'New research shows that while married men live longer than unmarried men, women do not gain this benefit from being married'. [http://www.physorg.com/news192882557.html Item number 2]: 'The most extensive genetic analysis to date supports the conclusion that all life on earth descended from a single common ancestor'. And [http://www.chandra.harvard.edu/press/10_releases/press_051110.html item number 3]: 'New observations indicate that much of the missing matter in the universe is not dark matter but rather a diffuse hot cloud of intergalactic gas made of normal ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baryon baryonic]) matter'. Massimo, since you're our guest, I'll have you go first.

M: You want me to pick one? Eh?

S: One of them is false, yes, so pick the one that's false.

M: The one that's false is the one about the common ancestor. My reading of the literature is actually quite the opposite, that the more we know about very deep, base of the tree of life, the more it doesn't look like a single common ancestor, it looks more like a web. So I'd be surprised if somebody all of a sudden has reversed a trend that has been going on for several years, but you never know. The baryonic matter thing seems actually fairly counter-trending, because in the last few years there's been a lot of talk about dark-matter. So that would be surprising as well, actually, if it were true. But I'm father away from that field of research so I'm not gonna- I'm not as confident on that one. As far as the first one is concerned, I'm not surprised, of course it doesn't- there's no benefit for women to hang around with men for a long time.

S: Ok, let's see, Bob, go next.

B: (reading over) 'Much of the missing matter … is not dark…' yeah, dark matter has been getting a lot of the news, but there always was this- I always thought there was also this other missing matter that wasn't ''necessarily'' dark matter. Hmmm, I'm not sure how significant it is in terms of percentage. I'm gonna go with that one, I'm gonna say that that one is science. The second one, though, 'The most extensive genetic analysis to date supports the conclusion that all life on earth descended from a single common ancestor', I'm gonna say that one is science, I'm gonna agree with that one. If you look at the proteins and the genetic basis for all life, it's clear that we all are related, and there's no anomaly out there that kind of points the way towards a separate genesis that might be- that's not so different from us, if they used, for example, different proteins that other life wouldn't use, so I'm gonna say that yeah, they could have done some huge study that conclusively analyzed the data and showed that all life is related. So yeah, that one makes sense to me. Something funky, though about this first one about married men living longer than unmarried men, but women not gaining that benefit, that one doesn't sound right to me, I'm gonna say that one is fiction.

S: Ok, Evan?

E: I think the one about women not getting the benefit from being married is science. I think that the missing matter in the universe not being dark matter, but rather normal matter, is also science. I think you're right, it was 20 or 24% of the known universe is dark matter, Bob, if I recall. So, I'm not too surprised by that. I'm ''very'' convinced by what Massimo had to say about all life coming from a single ancestor, so I am going that route, and I'll say that one is fiction.

S: Ok, Rebecca

R: Hmmm, it is a tricky one. I was under the impression that it was still considered correct that it was all descended from a common ancestor, but we just didn't have the tools necessary to do a large-scale study on it, but I can see how we may have those tools now, so I think that one is quite possibly science. I don't know anything really about the missing matter in the universe being actually normal, baryonic matter. That would be pretty surprising to me if it's true, but the idea that married men live longer than unmarried men but women don't get the same benefit, that doesn't quite make sense to me because I was under the impression that all married people live longer because they're more likely to look out for one another and notice when health problems crop up and things like that, and encourage them to see doctors, and that's the sort of thing that seems like it should swing both ways, so I'm gonna go ahead and say that that one is the fiction.

S: Ok, Jay, so we have two for married women not getting a benefit from being married, and two for the single common ancestor. What do you say?

J: So I'll be some sort of tie-breaker if I go with one of those two?

S: Right

J: Ok, well I'll take these in reverse order, which I find interesting.

(laughter)

M: For whatever reason

J: The one about the observations indicate that much of the missing matter in the universe is an intergalactic cloud of gas, I'm surprised that if that is science, that I wouldn't have heard that, that that wouldn't have been a massive news story. Unless it just came out two hours ago. So I'm not sure about that one, but that makes sense to be the fiction, but I'm really leaning towards the research about men and women and how long they live, whether they're married or unmarried. From my recollection that men and women both definitely gain years of life significantly – I think men were gaining ten plus years, and I think women were too. I don't remember the details, but yeah, I think that one's the fake.

S: Ok. So, I guess I'll take these in reverse order, since you all agree in number three: 'New observations indicate that much of the missing matter in the universe is not dark matter but rather a diffuse hot cloud of intergalactic gas made of normal (baryonic) matter'. And that one is … science.

R: Cool

E: I thought you were gonna say fiction there.

S: Yeah, it would've been nice, huh? So that's called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warm–hot_intergalactic_medium WHIM]: Warm, Hot, Intergalactic Matter.

J: Steve, when did you read that?

S: Pretty recently, today

M: A couple of hours ago, in fact.

S: And this was a discovery, this was just announced yesterday actually. This was observations made by the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandra_X-ray_Observatory Chandra x-ray observatory], and this is something that astronomers have been chasing for a while, they suspect that there's some amount of matter in between the galaxies, left over remnants from the formation of galaxies, plus other matter seeded into it from galaxies, but it's really hard to see because it's wispy thin. But they were able to use the x-ray telescope to pin-point it a little bit further, and they found that yeah, there's actually a significant amount of this stuff. And we've actually reported on some preliminary data for this before, I think in fact, this was a previous Science or Fiction. It's really hot, you know, they say warm hot, but warm being 100,000 degrees and hot being up to 10million degrees. And this does explain much of it – not all of it, there's still dark matter, dark matter definitely exists, and this doesn't change that. But this does fill in a huge chunk of the missing matter in the universe, that we knew had to be there because of the local gravity, for example.

M: So this is a really big deal, because the dark matter discussion's been going on for some time. Now when you say there's definitely dark matter left over, I think, well, at this point a reasonable question would be 'really? Or is it that we're missing something else?'

S: Well that's true but-

B: No

S: -you can always- I think there's a common perception that it's an argument from ignorance, that basically there's gotta be stuff there but we don't know what it is, so let's call it dark matter, but we really are beyond that with dark matter. First of all, the majority of the evidence ''for'' dark matter comes from looking at how galaxies behave, and therefore intergalactic matter wouldn't really impact on that at all, right?

B&M: Yeah

S: So it's initially used to explain why the galaxy is rotating as quickly as it is, so obviously intergalactic gas won't affect that. Plus, there's also, you remember the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_Cluster Bullet galaxy], where one galaxy crashed into another one, and the normal matter came to a stop but the dark matter went past it, and we could see it, we could see the gravitational effect of the dark matter continuing to move through the other galaxy while the gas clouds basically crashed into each other and came to a halt. So, there is still dark matter, what it ''is'' is a mystery, but there is something that's there that we can't see that's having a gravitational effect, and this is really just looking for the intergalactic matter that we knew was there, but couldn't see.

B: And there's other lines of evidence, even beyond what you've mentioned, Steve, that are extremely compelling, so…

S: Right, but this does affect the equation of how we divide up the universe, how much baryonic, how much energy, how much dark energy, how much dark matter. They didn't give specific figures, I don't think they're at that point yet, but we'll see how this affects- how much different kinds of stuff in our universe, so, very interesting. Let's go on to number two: 'The most extensive genetic analysis to date supports the conclusion that all life on earth descended from a single common ancestor'. Massimo and Evan, you think this one is the fiction, everyone else thinks this one is science, and this one is … science.

M: Really?

R: Hooray

S: It is, yeah. So I was with you, Massimo, that's why I included this, although it kinda depends on exactly what you mean by a common ancestor, and also what you think the implication is of the horizontal genetic transfer that you're talking about, especially at the base of the tree, and also when you get down to single-celled creatures like bacteria, they horizontally transfer a lot of genetic information from one species to another. It's not so much of the simpler construction of a branching tree, although, either when you get farther away from the roots, or when you get to more complicated multi-cellular life, there is more of the linear genetic transfer, there's less, although non-zero, horizontal transfer. We can still trade genes, do you guys know how that happens? How we might, like, one mammalian species might exchange genes to a completely unrelated mammalian species?

M: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transposable_element Transposons], for instance.

S: Yeah, and viruses, right? So a virus can take a little bit of DNA from us and infect another species and give it to them.

J: Oh, wow

S: Yep

E: Yeah, so be careful which animals you hang around with!

S: Right, but this was an extensive genetic analysis, they looked at- and Bob, you were talking as if you read this, did you? Or did you just put that on?

B: Maybe

(laughter)

R: So smart, man, just knows his stuff.

S: They looked at 23 universally conserved proteins, meaning they exist in every species, they're universally conserved, and they looked at different species from the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eukaryote Eukaryotes], from the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaea archaea] and from bacteria, and so the most different, most fundamental branches of the tree of life, if you will, and they did a very- the kind of computer analysis that you really could only do ''recently''. I mean, computers had to be as powerful as they are just recently to do the kind of analysis they did. And they basically asked the question 'what's the most likely configuration of these proteins?', and what they concluded was that all of life on earth, being descended from a single common ancestor population, is millions of times more likely than any other possible configuration, that that is overwhelmingly the most likely scenario.

M: So I'm sure this is going to cause the crash of the entire intelligent design movement

S: Oh, absolutely

(laughter)

M: And one of the things-

R: Yeah, they're just gonna give up

M: Yeah, give up, cos one of the things they've been saying over the last few years is precisely was that when the research was pointing toward a reticulate base for the tree of life, a lot of those people picked up on that 'see, Darwin was wrong, there is no single common ancestor', which of course is a non-sequitor-

S: Yes

M: -it doesn't matter what the actual base, you know, the shape or structure of the base of the tree of life actually is. But now they're on record saying that, I think we should send an email to our esteemed colleagues and friends at the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_Institute Discovery Institute] and say 'Ok now, time to give up'

S: The Discovery Institute was jumping all over news items and articles like in the New Scientist about the 'webbiness' of the tree of life-

M: Exactly

S: -as if it's incompatible with evolution, which is a non-sequitor, as you say. And they were, again, trying to make the argument 'see, Darwin was wrong', with the most simplistic misunderstanding of what the actual science was saying. But this was nice, actually in the article, the scientists talk about the fact that, yeah, there's 'webbiness' at the base of the tree, but it doesn't matter, even if you have multiple different species exchanging genes back and forth, essentially they're gonna form into one species, and even if there were multiple origins, even, multiple origins with horizontal transfer is also possible, but the bottom line is they passed at some point through one common ancestor species, which then differentiated to all life on earth. That's what their analysis showed.

M: That's an important point they make, the distinction, so the finding is a most recent common ancestor, single common ancestor, does not imply that life originated only once.

S: Right

M: Because, as you just said, it could have been that at some point there was a lot of going back and forth in horizontal gene transfer, and then a bottleneck happened, and then we got one ancestor left, yes, that's right.

S: That's right, very good. Which means that 'New research shows that while married men live longer than unmarried men, women do not gain this benefit from being married', and that is fiction.

M: (laughs)

S: This was a very subtle twisting of the research on my part, so good for you guys on getting this right, but this was- I was hoping I was gonna catch people who read the summary of this-

B: haha, I ''love'' when you do this!

S: -because if you read the summary of this, you could very easily get confused, because they kinda give the false impression that women don't gain the advantage from being married. But then they say at the end that men and women who are married both live longer than men and women who are not married, ''however'', here's what the new research showed: men gain ''more'' of a benefit when their wife is younger than they are, and that is a fairly linear relationship that doesn't change. So for-

B: Ah, that's where you got it from, yep

S: -so when the wife is older than the man, the husband still benefits, but not as much. And the younger the wife gets, the more the male benefits, in terms of living longer.

M: It must be all that sex.

B: (laughs)

S: Well that's ''one'' hypothesis, the hyper-sexed hypothesis. They said the leading hypothesis-

E: Hyper-sexed

S: -as to why this was the case, was, one was a selection for healthy males, that healthy males were attracted to, or were able to attract younger women, so they were being- they were already destined to live longer, right?

M: So it's not a causal connection there

S: Well, the other hypothesis is that younger women would be able to take care of their older husbands better and longer, and therefore that contributed to their longevity. So those were the two main factors that they thought; they were younger and better able to take care of them, and there was a healthy male selection bias.

B: But not just the healthy male selection bias, but I would think it's maybe related and indistinguishable, but the fact that not only were you in better shape initially, but you try to maintain that shape just to- cos you feel you ''have'' to, to keep somebody that's significantly younger than you, you might ''have'' to work out, and-

S: You think they're working out more?

B: -and do more. It ''could'' be-

R: Yeah, but then women would get the same benefit.

S: So here's the thing, that data existed only for men, and they assumed it was the same for women, now there's the new study that compares it to women, and it turns out that women who are married, get the most benefit from being married when the husband is the same age as they are. When their husband gets older than they are, the benefit decreases, and, surprisingly, when the husband gets younger than they are, it significantly decreases, even much more than being older. So women-

E: The husband's a drag

B: Wow

S: Yeah, the younger men are a ''drag'' on- again, we shouldn't say that, that's where the article sorta gets confusing, because it makes it sound like younger husbands are a detriment, but they're just not as much of a benefit as same-aged husbands, right?

M: There's still an advantage in being married, but not as much, I see.

S: Yeah, not as much, so why does that advantage diminish with a younger age, relatively, of the husband, and that kinda called into question the hypotheses that they were putting forward to explain the linear relationship with spousal age with men.

== Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:17:39) ==
S: Jay, do you have a quote for us?

J: Ok, so this week's quote:
<blockquote>Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.</blockquote>

M: And that, of course, is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw George Bernard Shaw].

R: Come on, that's the best you can do?

M: GEORGE BERNARD SHAW!

(laughter)

B: Yeah!

E: Awesome

S: Good job, Massimo

R: That was pretty good

B: There you go

E: I have a new ringtone for my phone!

B: Maximo Massimo

== Announcements (1:18:07) ==
J: I have three announcements, Steve

S: Go ahead

J: The Granite State Skeptics at [http://www.granitestateskeptics.org/ GraniteStateSkeptics.org] is having the Granite State Skeptics panel at [http://www.granitecon.com/ Granitecon], May 23rd, Manchester, New Hampton. GraniteStateSkeptics.org

S: Cary Granite

(laughter)

J: I'm also gonna be in Arizona at Skeptics in the Pub, Phoenix, Arizona, at the Rock Bottom bar. That is on May 22nd at 7pm.

B: Really, wow!

S: You get around, Jay. Massimo, you gonna be at TAM 8 this year?

M: I certainly will, my first time, I'm really excited about it

B: Cool!

S: First time, eh? We'll be gentle.

(laughter)

S: Massimo, it's been wonderful having you on the show as a guest Rogue.

M: It was a pleasure, as usual.

S: Thank you all for joining me.

J: Thanks, Steve

R: Thank you, Steve

M: It was good to be joined to you

B: You're welcome

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

{{Outro119}}

== Today I Learned... ==
* The definition of 'siphon' in the English Oxford dictionary has been wrong for nearly a century ([http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/may/10/dictionary-definition-siphon-wrong Guardian article])
* Evidence suggests that humans and Neanderthals interbred around 60-80,000 years ago, with 1-4% of the Neanderthal DNA found in DNA of individuals from Europe, Asia and Papua New Guinea, but none found in individuals from western and southern Africa ([http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/science/05/07/neanderthal.human.genome/index.html CNN article])
* DNA can transfer from one mammalian species to another via viruses
* An extensive genetic analysis supports the conclusion that all life on earth descended from a single common ancestor ([http://www.physorg.com/news192882557.html PhysOrg article])
* Observations indicate that much of the missing matter in the universe is not dark matter but rather a diffuse hot cloud of intergalactic gas made of normal ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baryon baryonic]) matter, called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warm–hot_intergalactic_medium WHIM] – Warm, Hot, Intergalactic Matter ([http://www.chandra.harvard.edu/press/10_releases/press_051110.html NASA press release])
* Married men and women live longer than unmarried men and women respectively. However, men gain more benefit the younger their wife is than them, whilst women gain most benefit when their husband is the same age ([http://www.demogr.mpg.de/en/news_press/press_releases_1916/marriage_and_life_expectancy_1813.htm Max Planck Institute press release])
* A "Poe" is a statement that is difficult to distinguish as a belief or satire of that belief.

== References ==
<references/>

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User:Sunny256

2012-10-15T10:31:37Z

Sunny256: Add link to my Wikipedia user page

My name is Øyvind A. Holm, and I'm a Norwegian guy born in 1969. Somewhat active in skeptical circles in Norway along with some open source activities, mostly related to Linux.

For more information and to not repeat everything, please visit my [[Wikipedia:User:Sunny256|Wikipedia user page]].

User talk:Sunny256

2012-10-15T10:16:46Z

Sunny256: Thanks to Rwh86

'''Welcome to ''SGUTranscripts''!'''
We hope you have fun.
You will probably want to read the [[Help:Contents|help pages]].
Again, welcome and have fun! [[User:Rwh86|Rwh86]] ([[User talk:Rwh86|talk]]) 10:06, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
: Thanks for the welcome! Looks like an interesting project. [[User:Sunny256|Sunny256]] ([[User talk:Sunny256|talk]]) 10:16, 15 October 2012 (UTC)