SGU Episode 864

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SGU Episode 864
January 30th 2022
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 863                      SGU 865
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
I love science. I hate supposition, superstition, exaggeration, and falsified data. Show me the research; show me the results; show me the conclusions; and then show me some qualified peer reviews of all that.
Bill Vaughan, American columnist
Links
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Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction

Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, January 26^th, 2022 and this is your host, Steven Novella. (applause) Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening folks!

S: How's everyone this lovely Wednesday deep winter cold frigid day?

C: Oh no it's cold?

J: Oh god Cara.

E: Super cold.

J: It's one of those days Cara, you go outside for about 2 seconds and you're like oh my god it's cold.

S: Nope.

C: The high today was 72 I think in LA, so that's like 22 for all you Celsius listeners. Yeah, it was nice.

E: Yeah, -4 here, right now, -4 Celsius.

COVID-19 Updates

Florida's Surgeon General Nominee (1:01)

S: So get this, we retweeted this on our Twitter account, by the way if you don't follow us on Twitter, do. We do put some information there for you. We retweeted this thing. Ron DeSantis, he's the governor of Florida, he's nominee for surgeon general refused to answer four times, yes or no, do the Covid vaccines work. Wouldn't answer the question, yes or no.

B: What? He would not answer that?

E: How did he answer?

S: His first answer was, the question is a scientific one. That was the entirety of his answer.

E: Yeeeees...

C: Yeah, and you're a scientist or a physician or you should be if you're being nominated for this position.

S: He was pushed to answer yes or no, and his answer was 'A scientist who can answer any specific scientific questions'. So he's saying that he was a scientist who can answer any specific scientific questions. Go ahead, give me your questions, I just did, yes or no.

C: (laughs) Except that one.

S: He did say, reasonable effectiveness for the prevention of hospitalization and death and relatively low effectiveness for prevention. Which is not really true.

C: No it's not true at all.

S: Yeah.

B: So what role is is he trying to fill?

S: Would not, could not, just didn't feel comfortable saying yes, the vaccines work. Just did not feel comfortable saying that.

E: Interesting.

S: That's where we are. Politicized science.

B: What's he's gonna be, surgeon private?

(laughter)

J: All right so the bottom line is that he doesn't believe it or refuses to acknowledge it.

B: Or he's pandering.

E: Politically speaking he can't acknowledge it.

S: He did not feel comfortable saying no. Like it was politically incorrect to say yeah the vaccines work, they're effective, that was politically a no-go.

B: It's pathetic.

C: What goes on in the mind of somebody who hopefully, I mean he must know the truth, right?

S: Of course he does. He's a doctor, he knows.

C: Yeah like it must feel not good in his heart, you know to be sort of struggling with that.

B: Assumes he has one.

J: But Cara it shows you, in the order of importance, in certain people's minds─

B: Right, right, say it.

J: ─you know everybody has that politics is much more important than science. Unfortunately his paycheck is tied to him keeping his mouth shut.

S: The thing is, the surgeon general, a surgeon general should be like an apolitical position.

E: Correct.

C: Absolutely.

S: He's a science advisor.

C: Not just bipartisan, apolitical.

S: Apolitical, totally. We need those people in the government, people how can provide from a neutral, apolitical, non-ideological point of view. Here are the fact, this is what the experts say, this is what's true. So we can't even agree on what's true anymore, even when these are basic established facts. That's the problem.

C: Right. We can all point to outcome evidence, solid outcome evidence that's been reproduced, that we wish weren't the case, right? Like that doesn't align with something that we want to be true but the fact is, it's true and we have to be comfortable, we have to have the neuropsychological humility as we always talk about to say, I don't like it, but this is what the science shows.

E: Right.

S: Now at a recent, guys there was a recent anti vaccine rally in DC. And it was kind of all-purpose conspiracy rally, you know, even though─

C: Got some Q Anon thrown in?

S: ─ostensibly anti vaccine but everything was there, you know. Guess who was like one of the big─

E: Kennedy! Robert F. Kennedy.

S: ─yeah Robert F. Kennedy jr.

C: Of course.

B: He's been around?

J: Oh come on what's the matter with him Steve? (laughs)

E: Oh my god, vaccines causes autism right?

J: I know I know.

S: This guy is, again I'm trying to figure out what happened to this guy. He started out as an environmentalist and somehow he went down the rabbit hole of anti-vaccine and I suspect he is just completely buried in a process of confirmation bias and motivated reasoning. Now he's found so much evidence to confirm he's belief that he's done, he's just done. He said at the rally: 'if you take the vaccine you have a 25% increase change of dying over the next 6 months'.

E: What?

S: Where did that come from? Nowhere. Absolutely nowhere, but what he does, like, a lot of anti-vaxxers do, he does what we call dumpster diving in the vaers reporting, database.

E: Oh the vaers.

S: Which is just an open unfiltered you know voluntarily reporting system. It's not scientific information, you can basically, its a Rorschach test, you can see what you want there.

E: Sounds like can read anything into it.

S: Yeah. Meanwhile, the CDC data found in during October November, guess how much more likely were you to die from Covid if you were unvaccinated versus somebody who is fully vaccinated?

E: 18 times.

B: 20 times?

C: Probably 45 times.

S: 53 times. 53 times the risk of death, 53 times the risk of death, can you imagine?

B: Yeah but those are your facts.

C: (laughs)

S: Right, but if you can't trust, you can't trust the CDC, right, so you get up to make up your own facts by doing unscientific observations and a completely unscientific database.

E: It's like a flat-earther mentality.

S: Yeah totally.

E: They're so so steeped in it and they can never come out of it, they don't want to emerge from it, it is their reality and they're so comfortable in it, they'll never leave it, ever abandon it.

C: Problem is this is one of those situations in which reality not only does reality exist, reality has, it's violent in this situation.

J: It's pounding on the door, reality is that people are dying and tons of people are catching this virus and the vaccines are so unbelievably clearly benefits anybody who takes it. And if you turn a blind eye to that, you are intellectually compromised. On some level.

C: And you're harming public health.

Vaccination Good News (6:37)

S: Here's some good news. Couple of recent studies I wanna point out. One showed that if you either were infected with Covid and then later got vaccinated, or you were vaccinated and had a breakthrough infection you got this hybrid super immunity─

J: It's a hybrid.

S: ─with 10 times the antibodies as being vaccinated alone. Or being infected alone.

C: What?

B: What?

S: 10 times the antibodies.

C: So wait...

B: Jay man you're superman dude.

J: That's awesome. For how long?

S: We don't know that.

B: 5 minutes.

(laughter)

E: Yeah there's a half-life.

S: Time will tell. That's good in that with the spread of Omicron and with the spread of vaccines this is one of the paths that we can get to the pandemic burning itself out and just turning into another flu/cold sort of endemic respiratory virus. Now I do have to emphasize this doesn't mean like if you're fully vaccinated go out and get Covid, it doesn't mean that at all, the whole point, is to not get Covid. And getting Covid is a really terrible way of not getting Covid.

C: Right (laughs)

S: It's a really, it doesn't work.

C: By definition.

S: I really studied this extensively and I'm pretty sure that getting Covid is the worst way to avoid getting Covid.

B: But, but, that begs the question, how can you induce that super-immunity without getting Covid?

C: Boosters probably?

B: No, I doubt that.

S: The thing is, if you could fully boost it, you're fine. You have good effectiveness against even the new variant.s

B: But I want super immunity!

C: (laughs) Wear a mask?

B: I do! I want more!

S: It's still important to avoid Covid for a few reasons, first it's not a benign illness even if you are, if it's a breakthrough infection and you're vaccinated, you're much much better of being vaccinated but you can still get some annoying long Covid symptoms. I know people who have lost their taste and it's taking a long time to come back─

E: That sucks.

S: ─or it doesn't come back fully or the same it was before, like there's something off about it.

E: Frankly some people never had taste to begin with but go ahead.

S: That's true. But any case it's not so benign that you should seek it out, just for the extra immunity so that you don't get it. Again that doesn't even makes sense. And don't think that this is gonna help end the pandemic cause every infection is adding to the probability of more variants emerging.

C: Yes.

S: So just, still try not to get infected, wear a mask, social distance, avoid people who are known to be infected etc. Get fully boosted but if you do get it you're likely to have a very mild illness and it will give you enhanced immunity beyond just being vaccinated or just getting infected alone. The other bit of good news is that the Pfizer CEO just announced that they are ready with an Omicron version of their vaccine.

C: I'm so excited.

S: Will be released in March.

C: I wonder how long you would have had to wait.

S: Yeah that still remains to be seen.

B: So the next booster then, it will be the next booster.

S: Yeah next booster will cover Omicron.

C: Right. We were boosted, I was boosted in October, I want that Omicron booster gimme gimme. I'm feeling like by the day it's been too long you know I'm scared.

S: Well I think so boosting created higher antibody titers than just being fully vaccinated. Hopefully it will also produce longer immunity, which tends to happen, the more number of times you get boosted the longer lasting your immunity is. That's probably true. Again I'm hoping and I think this is reasonable that we'll settle into and annual Covid vaccine. With the flue vaccine. And they'll track the variants just like they tracked the variants with flu and that'll be, that's it. I'll be just one more flu-like, again this is what happens populations just build more and more and more immunity to an infection until it becomes like the cold or the flu, you know.

E Can they combine the two into one? The flu vaccination and the Covid vaccination?

C: Probably.

S: Theoretically. I don't know if they will.

C: It may not be worthwhile.

S: There may be technical reasons why they don't, in mRNA might need different preservatives, unless they make a mRNA flu vaccine that's compatible. But getting two jabs is no big deal, you go, here's your flu, here's your Covid. No big deal.

C: Yeah I got mine at the same time.

E: Yes, but wouldn't the rate be higher if it were a one shot as opposed to two for most, for people? I would think that's how the numbers would work out.

S: Yeah, if they can do it, they probably will, but I wouldn't count on that. Especially with the fact that there are different kinds of vaccines.

C: Don't like elderly or immunocompromised people often take a different flu shot.

S: There's a high dose.

C: Yeah there's like a high dose flu shot, and then there's...

S: There's the quadrivalent versus the trivalent, I always, when they ask me, I'm like give me the high dose quadrivalent please I want the whole full both [inaudible]

C: Why don't, that's a good idea, so we can just ask for the quadrivalent?

B: And sprinkles and [inaudible].

S: Because I'm a hospital, I don't know if it's because of a healthcare work, you probably can get it Cara, so because you're a health care worker you can get a high dose if you want like give it to me.

E: ♪♪You take the high dose, I take the low dose♪♪

C: Sure, I don't want the flu, flu is horrible.

S: They're both fine, it's just you know if I, I'll take the, I want the extra, I'll take it.

B: Fine shmine.

E: You look at the menu, I think I'll have the high dose today.

S: Well now they have the quadrivalent they basically just have, they permanently added the swine flu, the H1N1 it's not the permanent part of the flu vaccine.

E: That makes sense.

C: It just makes sense.

S: There's just gonna be more and more vaccines in our life that's gonna give us immunity against these you know increasing zoonotic infections and you know the anti-vaxxers man, they're not going away, we know they're not going anywhere. We've got to marginalize the hell out of them.

C: Make it like uncool.

S: This is our primary weapon, it's gotta be, oh you are anti-vaxxer, you're weird.

C: Right, exactly.

What’s the Word? (12:30)

• Allopatric

S: Cara, you're gonna do a What's the Word this week.

C: I am, it's been a bit, so it's time for a new What's the Word and this one is a little bit different than usual in that I found the word I liked, realized there's a bunch other versions sort of of it, or alternate forms, wanna dig in to all of them so I know we've recently been talking about evolution as in we're always are talking about evolution, one of our favorite topics on the show. And did you know that many evolutionists and ecologists actually look at speciation and categorize speciation differently based on different characteristics. Most of these categorical systems fall into five different types of speciation: allopatric, peripatric, parapatric, sympatric and artificial.

E: Not Saint Patrick.

C: Not Saint Patrick, yeah. So will start with artificial cause that not really etymologically interesting, at least not for this discussion. Artificial speciation it's just speciation made by human beings, right maybe in a lab we are inventing a new species in order to be able to utilize it for laboratory studies. We do this a lot with fruit flies and things like that, that's artificial speciation, we put that one on the shelf.

But the other four types all have the same suffix, patric, do we know that patric comes from?

E: Ireland.

C: But you're right, you're kind of on the right path, what do we think of when we think of patric? Paaater.

B: Father.

E: Oh, patronus, right.

C: Yes yes, so all these different patrics are referring to 'the fatherland' they're refereeing to the ecological geographic region where these organisms exist. And so allopatric speciation which is one of the most common, one of the ones that I think is the most recognizable for us because we think of Darwin's finches. It occurs when basically one group, one specie separates into two groups because of a physical barrier, geographic barrier, isolation. So a mountain, a river, an ocean. And when we look at the word allo-patric, well what does allo, the prefix mean? It comes from the original Greek and it means 'other'. And here's an interesting thing that I'm sure Steve you know and maybe many of the guys on the show know but I came to because I was not steeped in the skeptic dictionary the way you guys were for so long, when we hear the term allopathic. Allopathic medicine, which is an antiquated word and not a good word.

S: A derogatory.

C: A derogatory word. It was actually invented by Samuel Hahnemann─

E: Oh, homeopathy.

C: ─the inventor of homeopathy, yeah, so he coined the term allopatic to mean other medicine. Other.

J: Ooooh.

E: As in non-medicine.

C: As in non-medicine when really it is medicine.

S: It's more of it's like homeopathic is like working with the body and allopathic is medicine that works against the body. I think that was more the idea.

C: But the word allo.

S: It's from the outside, it's other, yeah.

C: Other, yeah, exactly, the other, the outside the kind of, so when we think of allopatric not allopathic but allopatric speciation it's when one group is othered form it, right? So you got this one group that splits off into two and they are othered from each other. Of course the classic example is Darwin's finches. this finch has this type of beak because it has this type of food source on this island. This finch has this other so they are now different species because of that.

S: Yeah so they're in different locations, I think is the simple way to put it. They evolved into different species because they were geographically separated. As opposed to─

C: As opposed to being together.

S: ─sympatric, they're in the same place, but just in different niches, right.

C: Right, but peripatric and parapatric are sort of in between. So peripatry, peri, the root for that meaning around, about or enclosing. And you know we've heard that with different scien peri whatever. And so peripartic is a situation where there are still physical barriers that make it hard for this groups to interbreed but one group is much smaller than another so you don't really see equal groups, you see the main species group and then you see the small offshoot. That's peripatric.

And parapatric which what does para mean, what's that route? This ones brutal it means besid, alongside, between, around, surrounding, adjacent, parallel, near, but also opposite, on the far side. This one's kinda frustrating because you can kinda use it a lot of different ways but parapatric speciation specifically is when the geographic area it's just so big that's it's hard for different groups to mate with one another, so there may not be a physical boundary, like a mountain range or a river. But it's just so far spread out, that even though they're technically are in the same like biome or the same ecological area, they're just not mating because they're physically far away from one another.

S: Just far away, that would be like orca in different oceans.

C: Exactly.

S: They're connected but they're just far away.

C: But they're just really far away. And then you mentioned Steve sort of the opposite of allopartic which is sympatric speciation and sympartic speciation is sort of controversial, like some scientists don't think this is a cause of speciation. They think there's other reasons behind why these species and these situations would have speciated. But the idea here is that there aren't any physical barriers, they're in close proximity to one another and the new species spontaneously emerges. Maybe because of different characteristics a different food source, different mating choices. And some researchers say no, we think there has to be boundary or a barrier or a physical reason and it could be that something happened a long time ago and they came back together or there's some other reason that they're now cohabitating, that's not the right word, occupying the same space that they're now sympatric. And sym of course comes from together, joint, right like sin or sym.

So yeah, this is one of those fun situations where the science makes sense, you see this a lot in anatomy, where you're like I get why that is called that, because that is the Latin or Greek root and that is a perfect...

S: Adrenol is on top of the renols.

C: Exactly like what an easy label to understand. I love it when it's like that. So this is a really interesting example of that but now you know five different sources of speciation: allopatric, peripatric, parapatric, sympatric and artificial. And if you can't remember which is which just think back to that root.

S: Cara I think of the sympatric as the snitches, maybe some of them just have stars upon tars, they don't mix with the other ones. You can think of it in terms of culture, there is assortative mating [inaudible] status, that's sympatric in a way. If it got to the point where it's like the Elois and the─

B: Morlocks?

C: I have no idea.

S: Morlocks, yeah the Morlocks and the Elois.

E: Time machine?

S: Yeah, that was kind of a commentary on the class society when they became so separated they actually became different species.

C: Right right.

S: The workers and the haves and the have nots.

C: And so that really is the question I think for a lot of ecologists, behaviorists, evolutionists, is there a cultural behavioral basically a choice and interest and attraction that can occur within a species that's in the same geographic region when they just say I would rather mate with this option and that is such a strong that ultimately leads to speciation. Some thinks that that's the case some think, no there's gotta be a different mechanism in play.

S: Yeah, I mean the reason to be skeptical of that is we know that even different species are gonna hook up.

C: Right.

B: Uh baby.

S: When humans and chimps divided into two different lines for millions of years there were some hanky-panky going on.

C: Oh for sure.

S: If that's the case why wouldn't the same species be willing to mate, you know, there has to be something. It does makes sense that there would need to be some kind of.

C: Something else is going on. Like maybe the case that it happened sure in individual pairs or like in a certain generation but think about how long it takes for speciation to occur in a sexually reproducing species.

S: For example Cara if you have like if one individual has a chromosomal mutation and they have enough close relatives with that mutation where they can create a genetically incompatible sub-population of their species. The only reason that they become different species is genetic incompatibility. Not distance. But then again we're introducing a new reason [inaudible]

C: Exactly then it's a mutation for sure.

S: All right, cool.

C: Yeah, fun one.

News Items

S:

B:

C:

J:

E:

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

Carbon Signatures on Mars (21:29)

• Carbon Signatures and Life on Mars

Schoolkids and Conspiracy Theories (31:51)

• Schoolkids Are Falling Victim to Disinformation and Conspiracy Fantasies

Peter Jackson and AI (48:42)

• How Peter Jackson Used Artificial Intelligence to Restore the Video & Audio Featured in The Beatles: Get Back

Human Remains Locator (1:09:28)

• 'The Human Remains Locator' -- Forensic investigators develop tools they say can find bodies

Who's That Noisy? (1:17:51)

New Noisy (1:21:29)

[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]

J: So, guys, if you think you know what that is or if you heard something cool this week, do me a favor: just take the moment right now and send me that information at wtn@theskepticsguide.org.

Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups

Email: The Effects of Climate Change (1:25:44)

_consider_using_block_quotes_for_emails_read_aloud_in_this_segment_ with_reduced_spacing_for_long_chunks –

Science or Fiction (1:37:33)

Answer	Item
Fiction	Regrown rat leg
Science	Independent echolocation evolution
Science	Laparoscopy via robot surgery

Host	Result
Steve	swept

Rogue	Guess
Cara	Regrown rat leg
Bob	Regrown rat leg
Jay	Regrown rat leg
Evan	Regrown rat leg

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

Item #1: Researchers report they were able to successfully regrow a functional leg in a rat following treatment with a five-drug cocktail. Item #2: A new study of the neuroanatomy of bat hearing finds that bats fall into two groups with distinct anatomy for echolocation, suggesting that echolocation may have evolved independently in the two groups. Item #3: Scientists report the first successful laparoscopic operations, specifically intestine repair, performed entirely by a surgical robot without any human control.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:55:30)

I love science. I hate supposition, superstition, exaggeration, and falsified data. Show me the research; show me the results; show me the conclusions; and then show me some qualified peer reviews of all that.
– Bill Vaughan (1915-1977), American columnist and author

Signoff/Announcements ()

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

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

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