SGU Episode 665: Difference between revisions
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== What's the Word <small>(7: | == What's the Word <small>(7:20)</small> == | ||
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<!-- Yeah, let's. Go on to some news items. So mohr fearmongering about cell phones and cancer. No she's. Just one of the things i ever going to be rid of there's. An article recently in the in the nation, which is a left wing political paper, but the article was basically fearmongering. About cell phone and the risk of developing cancer, i thought actually, was. They did a very dated, a terrible job. They tried to say, oh, we're not saying that cell phones cause cancer will let the scientists decide that we're just saying that the telecom industry is hiding evidence that cell phones cause cancer. It was it was really it was really a bad piece of work. But it's, a lot of this is coming. From a recent study that was published that was in rats. This is from this is the national toxicology toxicology program study. They actually released their findings preliminary findings of a couple of years ago because they said all of these here we have some preliminary analysis. There's a lot of public inch this we want to get the results out there before, you know, would take a couple more years to get all the full data analysis out there and there. And they purported to show that there was a connection between exposure to the kind of radiation that's used in cell phones and cancer risk on then more recently, we've got the full data. There's still some, you know, find these in there that you can cherry pick if you want to make an argument that there is some some risk. But the data is basically negative. So let's, go let's delve into that. This is, you know, given a lot. This study, the tp the national toxicology program study has given a lot of fuel to the cell phone cancer alarmists on dh so it's important to to evaluate it. So, first of all this the study in rats and mice, they basically had four groups of test animals. Male rats, female, right that smell, mice, female mice. So they were exposed to radio frequency radiation for nine hours a day, every day for two years, starting in utero. And then they looked at multiple different types of potential cancer, essentially anywhere in the body. In these four groups, you know, the male female rats, male female rights might. Do you think they found pre cancer is something, maybe the so they must have found something if everybody's reporting. Yeah, yeah, they found some. They found something because because they were looking at so many different potential correlations right as we've discussed before every time you do a comparison in the study is another throw of the statistical dice right it's another opportunity to find a correlation especially for using point o five p value as the threshold for statistical significance that's not that much so if you do the calculations or was actually like an eighty percent chance that something was going to be significant in this study just based upon all of the different comparisons that they made so it's not surprising that they found some correlations if you correct the statistics for the fact that made multiple comparisons they were not statistically significant further you have to look at the pattern right especially you doing a toxicology study you're trying to say is there any hazard from this exposure ? Is there any correlation there you you'd like to see is a consistent dose response effect that lends a lot of credibility to it ? The absence of a of a good dose response type of pattern makes it seem like the results or random noise in this study they found a positive correlation for malignant gliomas that's a type of brain cancer but on lee in the male rats not on the female rats not in the male or female mice they also found a positive correlation for cardiac schwann omagh's cardiac sonoma's schwan don't want sells ? Yeah, the glial cells in the brain. Okay again on lian male rats not in any of the other three groups but also if you compared thieves the highest exposure to the lowest exposure to the no exposure groups it was not statistically significant it only becomes statistically significant if you do this certain kind of analysis where you're look at all the different exposure levels and see if there is a trend right they look at the six three one point five zero and so if you compared it there was three cases of cardiac sonoma in the group exposed to six watts per kilogram none in the other three groups and so you do two different kinds of statistical analysis on that one is positive one is negative right and just the straight up comparison of this six what for killed gang group zero watt per kilogram group was not statistically significant so all of that is consistent with random noise right you got to see that how it's like always in one sex but not the other and why the heart versus something else you know on lee if you do certain kinds of statistical analyses but not others there's no dose response curve you're talking about just a few rats you know that could one random you know rat getting a tumor is really all it would take in order to create results like this this totally has the look of of random noise. There is no clear signal in this data and therefore horrendous health effects in humans yeah so if anything if anything this study is pretty reassuring evidence that the radiation from cell phones it does not is not a hazard for cancer because they had these rats and mice exposed for two years from uterus hours at six nine hours a day the whole body whole body exposure nine hours a full time job yeah so obviously were exposed to it in their in their cage so under these extreme conditions you get get random noise yeah there's no clear signal of any kind of cancer but of course if your narrative is that cell phones cause cancer you could pull out the cherry pick the the apparent you know, significant effects without putting into the context of doing an actual a thorough statistical analysis by accounting for multiple comparisons right ? So it's fake it's just not a really not really significant it just only significant if you ignore the full evaluation right here if you cherry pick so did they not correct for the number of contrast they were doing in that know how did this get past reviewers ? Yeah exactly. So all right i think the reason is is that there's a difference between hazard and risk ? This is actually a good one word type that's like subject and target i get it so hazard and that's like a good example of this is i got that bob if you if you have a poison in your under your sink and you're in your kitchen that that poison is a hazard, but it's only a risk if you drink it. There's no risk to you just from it being there it's a hazard because it's a potential toe have a risk. But there is no anyway, so toxicologists like to identify potential hazards. And so they do studies in such a way to say, is there any possibility here that of a biological effect ? They're not asking the question ? Is there a biologic of low effect or risk of one in real life exposure situations ? That's a different question. So this study is really just asking about hazard, not risk they're not asking what's the risk of using a cell phone, they're asking, is there any hazard to cell phone radiation ? And then even in that farm or limited sense, the answer appears to be no it's an overall negative study, so even for hazard, which in and of itself i mean there's lots of things that are hazardous, like sharks or hazardous but there's no, but i'm not zero risk for sharks if you go swimming in a tank with a shark that's risky, so it makes sense oh, sure so but this hasn't stopped people from fearmongering about cell phones and cancer now the problem with the nation article is that it really is taking on a particular narrative which you know i hate narratives because it's basically you know it is a story that then is put above the facts logic and evidence and i've already seeing this narrative pere it'd in the comments on our facebook page when published like to our science based medicine article on those people are just parroting the narrative as if it's like an original thought to them always embarrassing so the narrative is that big telecom is doing the same thing that big tobacco did with the risk of tobacco of smoking tobacco and that the fossil fuel industry did in terms of global warming and that they're trying to sow doubt and confusion about the risks of cell phone use and they also said plus they're about to do this big five g rollout with even a mohr you know more radiation a massive radiation increase and they're trying to hide the risks from the public etcetera etcetera and this is the kind of evidence that they're cherry picking in order to make that narrative so again i never assumed that any industry or any company is benign i think we have to keep an eye on them absolutely they're in the business of making money they can or cannot choose to be good citizens and we never give them an assumption that they are right so but there's no reason to think that the telecom industry is claim is hiding actual data showing that there's any risk to cell phone use and we have lots of independent evidence showing us that there isn't there very reassuring you know, just the mere fact that there hasn't been any increase in brain tumors over the last thirty years when cell phone use has increased dramatically and of course the more time that goes by the more reassuring that data becomes because you know initially you could say well there's a lag was a five year like a ten year like a twenty year like ok well it's been twenty years six come ufo photos from cell phones yeah where are they ? I know it's hard to make the negative statement but the longer you go with the lack of any signal lack of any affect, the more reassuring it gets you could never say the risk is zero but you could say the risk is so loan at this point that i wouldn't worry about it right ? I mean the point is with the amount of people that use cell phones on a daily basis globally it's over a billion it's got to be over, you know, a seventh of the population if if not dramatically more than that we would absolutely no i think at this point if there was something in developed countries is like ninety percent of adults. So and even in developing countries it's a really high percentage now, like it's, cheaper and easier to get a cell phone than it is to have clean water in many area to compare it to something like tobacco which there's so much evidence of the different answers. Agents it's such a contrast, but they use it. That's the boogie man, they have to invoke it in order to give it legitimacy. Nothing else. So anyway, don't worry about it, you know, here oh, there is the study which shows, you know that cell phones are associated with cancer. It's not true is actually a very reassuring study. You know, this rat study things like they did everything they could to give these rats, you know, cancer from the silver radiation, and they got nothing. They got basically a negative study with just the used e absolutely statistically expected noise. Random crap that you would expect from this kind of study. Get more radiation, you get a bunch of bananas and they would be wait there's so many other sources of radio frequency. Electromagnetic, you know, effects in our environment, cell phones were actually quite negligible. Onda and i have to point out that it's, non ionizing radiation, right, it doesn't penetrate the skin thing s o the plausibility of non ionized radiation causing cancer by any mechanism you know you can't say that it zero just to be you you know a conservative scientist but it's pretty damn freakin low you know ionizing radiation yes, because it knocks causing mutations it could break bonds and molecules like the no or turn you into a super hero or villain oh, nice qualifier there, bob super behaving or villain but you know this is obvious something that will be continued to be followed to be studied i mean, bob, if your cell phone made you into a superhero, what would your lame power said ? Be right the cell phone reception download app you could like you could text like instantaneous text into somebody's mind what candy crush power fast recharge pretty lame above all lame all your teeth will turn blue --> | <!-- Yeah, let's. Go on to some news items. So mohr fearmongering about cell phones and cancer. No she's. Just one of the things i ever going to be rid of there's. An article recently in the in the nation, which is a left wing political paper, but the article was basically fearmongering. About cell phone and the risk of developing cancer, i thought actually, was. They did a very dated, a terrible job. They tried to say, oh, we're not saying that cell phones cause cancer will let the scientists decide that we're just saying that the telecom industry is hiding evidence that cell phones cause cancer. It was it was really it was really a bad piece of work. But it's, a lot of this is coming. From a recent study that was published that was in rats. This is from this is the national toxicology toxicology program study. They actually released their findings preliminary findings of a couple of years ago because they said all of these here we have some preliminary analysis. There's a lot of public inch this we want to get the results out there before, you know, would take a couple more years to get all the full data analysis out there and there. And they purported to show that there was a connection between exposure to the kind of radiation that's used in cell phones and cancer risk on then more recently, we've got the full data. There's still some, you know, find these in there that you can cherry pick if you want to make an argument that there is some some risk. But the data is basically negative. So let's, go let's delve into that. This is, you know, given a lot. This study, the tp the national toxicology program study has given a lot of fuel to the cell phone cancer alarmists on dh so it's important to to evaluate it. So, first of all this the study in rats and mice, they basically had four groups of test animals. Male rats, female, right that smell, mice, female mice. So they were exposed to radio frequency radiation for nine hours a day, every day for two years, starting in utero. And then they looked at multiple different types of potential cancer, essentially anywhere in the body. In these four groups, you know, the male female rats, male female rights might. Do you think they found pre cancer is something, maybe the so they must have found something if everybody's reporting. Yeah, yeah, they found some. They found something because because they were looking at so many different potential correlations right as we've discussed before every time you do a comparison in the study is another throw of the statistical dice right it's another opportunity to find a correlation especially for using point o five p value as the threshold for statistical significance that's not that much so if you do the calculations or was actually like an eighty percent chance that something was going to be significant in this study just based upon all of the different comparisons that they made so it's not surprising that they found some correlations if you correct the statistics for the fact that made multiple comparisons they were not statistically significant further you have to look at the pattern right especially you doing a toxicology study you're trying to say is there any hazard from this exposure ? Is there any correlation there you you'd like to see is a consistent dose response effect that lends a lot of credibility to it ? The absence of a of a good dose response type of pattern makes it seem like the results or random noise in this study they found a positive correlation for malignant gliomas that's a type of brain cancer but on lee in the male rats not on the female rats not in the male or female mice they also found a positive correlation for cardiac schwann omagh's cardiac sonoma's schwan don't want sells ? Yeah, the glial cells in the brain. Okay again on lian male rats not in any of the other three groups but also if you compared thieves the highest exposure to the lowest exposure to the no exposure groups it was not statistically significant it only becomes statistically significant if you do this certain kind of analysis where you're look at all the different exposure levels and see if there is a trend right they look at the six three one point five zero and so if you compared it there was three cases of cardiac sonoma in the group exposed to six watts per kilogram none in the other three groups and so you do two different kinds of statistical analysis on that one is positive one is negative right and just the straight up comparison of this six what for killed gang group zero watt per kilogram group was not statistically significant so all of that is consistent with random noise right you got to see that how it's like always in one sex but not the other and why the heart versus something else you know on lee if you do certain kinds of statistical analyses but not others there's no dose response curve you're talking about just a few rats you know that could one random you know rat getting a tumor is really all it would take in order to create results like this this totally has the look of of random noise. There is no clear signal in this data and therefore horrendous health effects in humans yeah so if anything if anything this study is pretty reassuring evidence that the radiation from cell phones it does not is not a hazard for cancer because they had these rats and mice exposed for two years from uterus hours at six nine hours a day the whole body whole body exposure nine hours a full time job yeah so obviously were exposed to it in their in their cage so under these extreme conditions you get get random noise yeah there's no clear signal of any kind of cancer but of course if your narrative is that cell phones cause cancer you could pull out the cherry pick the the apparent you know, significant effects without putting into the context of doing an actual a thorough statistical analysis by accounting for multiple comparisons right ? So it's fake it's just not a really not really significant it just only significant if you ignore the full evaluation right here if you cherry pick so did they not correct for the number of contrast they were doing in that know how did this get past reviewers ? Yeah exactly. So all right i think the reason is is that there's a difference between hazard and risk ? This is actually a good one word type that's like subject and target i get it so hazard and that's like a good example of this is i got that bob if you if you have a poison in your under your sink and you're in your kitchen that that poison is a hazard, but it's only a risk if you drink it. There's no risk to you just from it being there it's a hazard because it's a potential toe have a risk. But there is no anyway, so toxicologists like to identify potential hazards. And so they do studies in such a way to say, is there any possibility here that of a biological effect ? They're not asking the question ? Is there a biologic of low effect or risk of one in real life exposure situations ? That's a different question. So this study is really just asking about hazard, not risk they're not asking what's the risk of using a cell phone, they're asking, is there any hazard to cell phone radiation ? And then even in that farm or limited sense, the answer appears to be no it's an overall negative study, so even for hazard, which in and of itself i mean there's lots of things that are hazardous, like sharks or hazardous but there's no, but i'm not zero risk for sharks if you go swimming in a tank with a shark that's risky, so it makes sense oh, sure so but this hasn't stopped people from fearmongering about cell phones and cancer now the problem with the nation article is that it really is taking on a particular narrative which you know i hate narratives because it's basically you know it is a story that then is put above the facts logic and evidence and i've already seeing this narrative pere it'd in the comments on our facebook page when published like to our science based medicine article on those people are just parroting the narrative as if it's like an original thought to them always embarrassing so the narrative is that big telecom is doing the same thing that big tobacco did with the risk of tobacco of smoking tobacco and that the fossil fuel industry did in terms of global warming and that they're trying to sow doubt and confusion about the risks of cell phone use and they also said plus they're about to do this big five g rollout with even a mohr you know more radiation a massive radiation increase and they're trying to hide the risks from the public etcetera etcetera and this is the kind of evidence that they're cherry picking in order to make that narrative so again i never assumed that any industry or any company is benign i think we have to keep an eye on them absolutely they're in the business of making money they can or cannot choose to be good citizens and we never give them an assumption that they are right so but there's no reason to think that the telecom industry is claim is hiding actual data showing that there's any risk to cell phone use and we have lots of independent evidence showing us that there isn't there very reassuring you know, just the mere fact that there hasn't been any increase in brain tumors over the last thirty years when cell phone use has increased dramatically and of course the more time that goes by the more reassuring that data becomes because you know initially you could say well there's a lag was a five year like a ten year like a twenty year like ok well it's been twenty years six come ufo photos from cell phones yeah where are they ? I know it's hard to make the negative statement but the longer you go with the lack of any signal lack of any affect, the more reassuring it gets you could never say the risk is zero but you could say the risk is so loan at this point that i wouldn't worry about it right ? I mean the point is with the amount of people that use cell phones on a daily basis globally it's over a billion it's got to be over, you know, a seventh of the population if if not dramatically more than that we would absolutely no i think at this point if there was something in developed countries is like ninety percent of adults. So and even in developing countries it's a really high percentage now, like it's, cheaper and easier to get a cell phone than it is to have clean water in many area to compare it to something like tobacco which there's so much evidence of the different answers. Agents it's such a contrast, but they use it. That's the boogie man, they have to invoke it in order to give it legitimacy. Nothing else. So anyway, don't worry about it, you know, here oh, there is the study which shows, you know that cell phones are associated with cancer. It's not true is actually a very reassuring study. You know, this rat study things like they did everything they could to give these rats, you know, cancer from the silver radiation, and they got nothing. They got basically a negative study with just the used e absolutely statistically expected noise. Random crap that you would expect from this kind of study. Get more radiation, you get a bunch of bananas and they would be wait there's so many other sources of radio frequency. Electromagnetic, you know, effects in our environment, cell phones were actually quite negligible. Onda and i have to point out that it's, non ionizing radiation, right, it doesn't penetrate the skin thing s o the plausibility of non ionized radiation causing cancer by any mechanism you know you can't say that it zero just to be you you know a conservative scientist but it's pretty damn freakin low you know ionizing radiation yes, because it knocks causing mutations it could break bonds and molecules like the no or turn you into a super hero or villain oh, nice qualifier there, bob super behaving or villain but you know this is obvious something that will be continued to be followed to be studied i mean, bob, if your cell phone made you into a superhero, what would your lame power said ? Be right the cell phone reception download app you could like you could text like instantaneous text into somebody's mind what candy crush power fast recharge pretty lame above all lame all your teeth will turn blue --> | ||
=== Robot Bees on Mars <small>(27: | === Robot Bees on Mars <small>(27:08)</small>=== | ||
{{shownotes | {{shownotes | ||
|weblink = https://phys.org/news/2018-04-nasa-funds-feasibility-robot-bees.html | |weblink = https://phys.org/news/2018-04-nasa-funds-feasibility-robot-bees.html | ||
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<!-- that's usher bob but i love the title of your news item that you can talk us talk to us about robot bees on mars yeah sounds like a thriller from the fifties or something so you guys heard of snakes on a plane have a three story. So what ? Ness has awarded funding to a university of alberta elevator researchers and an unnamed team of japanese researchers to develop a swarm of robotic bees as a new type of mars rover so i love robotic swarms i don't make i don't i don't try to hide that fact she was pretty easy pretty obvious to me that they were going to be they're going to serve a critical function in the future they just they're just so cool oh yeah and helpful on so many levels so in this case that the need that's being potentially filled may seem counterintuitive because mars rovers have been among the most successful off world robotic missions in history, right ? You got mars pathfinder, sojourner exploration curiosity they all killed they just did so well unless it's so much longer than they were they were meant to learn so much signs from them and they were they were obviously a huge advantage over the vory early mars landers remember the lander's, eh pretty much wherever they landed that's where they stayed and for obvious reasons because the rovers can move to different locations for scientific examination or they could just move to a good spot in the sun to recharge their batteries so it so they're awesome but still they have a problem they're not very speedy on therefore they're limited to how far they could go. So if you really want to do some really long distance scientific investigation of mars, you need something that's a little better a little faster whatever so nasa is looking for the benefits of tiny flying rovers if you will to see what they would allow, eh ? So what are the options for a flying rover type technology ? Well, you've got fixed wings writes fixed wings technology like little airplanes they would that would work, but hovering is going to be a problem then there's rotor tech little mini battery operated helicopters or drones of course that have exploded into our reality the past dozen or so years there i mean, how awesome were drones ? Everybody loves drones, they're going to start doing anything. You may have a drone call flying car in the future they're just everywhere on the not the people who are killed by them but you're pretty much everybody true say so but then there's also good old fashioned flapping technology robotic birds or since they'd be very tiny, the robotic bees and so nasa thinks that this could potentially be the best option, which is why they're risking about one hundred twenty five grand for this phase one study to see if this is worth while on what they're calling mars bees, i think they could have come up with mars being more these throwing me it sounds like a like a pancake company mars be voters like a group from the sixties or something now the mars be no it's more like like a little little jelly bean like candy he's mars bees i want tio peanut butter and so so they're looking into flapping they think that's even worthwhile because because you could take advantage of various low power incredibly incredibly efficient technologies that use just flapping so it but it's kind of surprising if you think about it cause this is despite the fact that mars has an incredibly thin atmosphere which makes flapping much less efficient than it would be on earth where i think about it mars the atmosphere on mars is what is one hundred times thinner or is it a thousand dry ? I think i think it's a hundredth yeah i think it's one hundred something like that incredibly thin atmosphere so how the hell is a something that flaps or even anything that has even a fixed wing where rotor how is that going to even do well in such a thin atmosphere ? But don't forget the gravity on mars is fully one third one third that of earth so that that that's the that's the rial icing on the cake there that gives flapping any flapping technology a huge advantage even overcoming the thin the paucity of atmosphere on mars. So the idea then is this you have a normal sized lander or even a mobile rover that would act primarily as a communication hub so that that lander would would communicate with the with the swarm the bee swarms or and also back to earth presumably on dh it would also be used most probably more importantly as a recharging station for the swarm so they would go out and do their thing and then they would come back as the juice is getting low and and situate themselves plug into the lander rover and recharge their batteries i hope they call the hive theo the hive lander of the hive rover now the beast themselves would be about american bubble bumble bee sized ah you see how my qualifier there i did not know that the american bumble bee is about twenty five percent as large as the biggest bumble bees that exist i'm not sure where they are i'm not sure i want to go there they're probably the amazon yeah i was thinking that i was probably in borneo or something so yeah so the so these would be bumble bee size but they would have oversized that have oversized takeda wings because they have to be bigger because they thin atmosphere they have to be aa lot bigger than the conventional bumble bee and still it won't be a cakewalk for the bees that have to do ah a suite of things will have to fly well in an alien environment but also the bumble bees will have to carry sensors that could do real work and not just take you know low res pretty pictures you know you need some sensors that that might have some you know they might need to have some heft to them to be good sensors and anything with weight is going to be your downfall for such something like this, but then again, gravity is low there, so maybe you can get away with something bigger and also that the bees would have to do things like, like, somehow clean the dust off themselves. You know, you don't want that too, you know, messing up the works so they have to be able to clean themselves. But if it all works, though, and they think it could take ten years for this for this design in this research to see if it's even feasible. But if it does work, you know they'd be obviously be able to cover terrain much faster than anything that's ever been on the surface of mars before, or they even talking about using them to sample the atmosphere on mars looking for methane, which is which, of course, as we know is a hallmark of some biological processes. So so, yes. So it's cool to see where this goes. I thought we were kind of farther along than i've been. I've been seeing these the's, robotic winged, you know, robots for years and years and years, i would think that we'd be, and i haven't seen anything in a while. I would think that would be you know really farther along than through my research led me to believe i mean ten years of research before their you know before they think they have something i mean it's such a such a long time but yeah i guess i'm used to waiting for cool cool new technology always waiting bob right hey bob you know in case you're interested the largest bumble bee is often called a flying mouse by locals on and exhibitors words locals is it exists near patagonia it is of course endangered ah i know it's beautiful that it's like a beautiful reddish brown and like fuzzy looking bombed this dull bomi deflate a mouse eyes a double door yes right double there is type b i think it is is that you know you got the name from no way that's awesome a dumbbell doors and bumble bees they are fragging huge that's gary i'm sorry yes and it's just an old english term for bumble bee yeah it's a rare tio rare term for a kind of be i can't deal with freaky freaky big insects on my face for christ sake oh they're wonderful what about lunchtime here i love large dinosaurs --> | <!-- that's usher bob but i love the title of your news item that you can talk us talk to us about robot bees on mars yeah sounds like a thriller from the fifties or something so you guys heard of snakes on a plane have a three story. So what ? Ness has awarded funding to a university of alberta elevator researchers and an unnamed team of japanese researchers to develop a swarm of robotic bees as a new type of mars rover so i love robotic swarms i don't make i don't i don't try to hide that fact she was pretty easy pretty obvious to me that they were going to be they're going to serve a critical function in the future they just they're just so cool oh yeah and helpful on so many levels so in this case that the need that's being potentially filled may seem counterintuitive because mars rovers have been among the most successful off world robotic missions in history, right ? You got mars pathfinder, sojourner exploration curiosity they all killed they just did so well unless it's so much longer than they were they were meant to learn so much signs from them and they were they were obviously a huge advantage over the vory early mars landers remember the lander's, eh pretty much wherever they landed that's where they stayed and for obvious reasons because the rovers can move to different locations for scientific examination or they could just move to a good spot in the sun to recharge their batteries so it so they're awesome but still they have a problem they're not very speedy on therefore they're limited to how far they could go. So if you really want to do some really long distance scientific investigation of mars, you need something that's a little better a little faster whatever so nasa is looking for the benefits of tiny flying rovers if you will to see what they would allow, eh ? So what are the options for a flying rover type technology ? Well, you've got fixed wings writes fixed wings technology like little airplanes they would that would work, but hovering is going to be a problem then there's rotor tech little mini battery operated helicopters or drones of course that have exploded into our reality the past dozen or so years there i mean, how awesome were drones ? Everybody loves drones, they're going to start doing anything. You may have a drone call flying car in the future they're just everywhere on the not the people who are killed by them but you're pretty much everybody true say so but then there's also good old fashioned flapping technology robotic birds or since they'd be very tiny, the robotic bees and so nasa thinks that this could potentially be the best option, which is why they're risking about one hundred twenty five grand for this phase one study to see if this is worth while on what they're calling mars bees, i think they could have come up with mars being more these throwing me it sounds like a like a pancake company mars be voters like a group from the sixties or something now the mars be no it's more like like a little little jelly bean like candy he's mars bees i want tio peanut butter and so so they're looking into flapping they think that's even worthwhile because because you could take advantage of various low power incredibly incredibly efficient technologies that use just flapping so it but it's kind of surprising if you think about it cause this is despite the fact that mars has an incredibly thin atmosphere which makes flapping much less efficient than it would be on earth where i think about it mars the atmosphere on mars is what is one hundred times thinner or is it a thousand dry ? I think i think it's a hundredth yeah i think it's one hundred something like that incredibly thin atmosphere so how the hell is a something that flaps or even anything that has even a fixed wing where rotor how is that going to even do well in such a thin atmosphere ? But don't forget the gravity on mars is fully one third one third that of earth so that that that's the that's the rial icing on the cake there that gives flapping any flapping technology a huge advantage even overcoming the thin the paucity of atmosphere on mars. So the idea then is this you have a normal sized lander or even a mobile rover that would act primarily as a communication hub so that that lander would would communicate with the with the swarm the bee swarms or and also back to earth presumably on dh it would also be used most probably more importantly as a recharging station for the swarm so they would go out and do their thing and then they would come back as the juice is getting low and and situate themselves plug into the lander rover and recharge their batteries i hope they call the hive theo the hive lander of the hive rover now the beast themselves would be about american bubble bumble bee sized ah you see how my qualifier there i did not know that the american bumble bee is about twenty five percent as large as the biggest bumble bees that exist i'm not sure where they are i'm not sure i want to go there they're probably the amazon yeah i was thinking that i was probably in borneo or something so yeah so the so these would be bumble bee size but they would have oversized that have oversized takeda wings because they have to be bigger because they thin atmosphere they have to be aa lot bigger than the conventional bumble bee and still it won't be a cakewalk for the bees that have to do ah a suite of things will have to fly well in an alien environment but also the bumble bees will have to carry sensors that could do real work and not just take you know low res pretty pictures you know you need some sensors that that might have some you know they might need to have some heft to them to be good sensors and anything with weight is going to be your downfall for such something like this, but then again, gravity is low there, so maybe you can get away with something bigger and also that the bees would have to do things like, like, somehow clean the dust off themselves. You know, you don't want that too, you know, messing up the works so they have to be able to clean themselves. But if it all works, though, and they think it could take ten years for this for this design in this research to see if it's even feasible. But if it does work, you know they'd be obviously be able to cover terrain much faster than anything that's ever been on the surface of mars before, or they even talking about using them to sample the atmosphere on mars looking for methane, which is which, of course, as we know is a hallmark of some biological processes. So so, yes. So it's cool to see where this goes. I thought we were kind of farther along than i've been. I've been seeing these the's, robotic winged, you know, robots for years and years and years, i would think that we'd be, and i haven't seen anything in a while. I would think that would be you know really farther along than through my research led me to believe i mean ten years of research before their you know before they think they have something i mean it's such a such a long time but yeah i guess i'm used to waiting for cool cool new technology always waiting bob right hey bob you know in case you're interested the largest bumble bee is often called a flying mouse by locals on and exhibitors words locals is it exists near patagonia it is of course endangered ah i know it's beautiful that it's like a beautiful reddish brown and like fuzzy looking bombed this dull bomi deflate a mouse eyes a double door yes right double there is type b i think it is is that you know you got the name from no way that's awesome a dumbbell doors and bumble bees they are fragging huge that's gary i'm sorry yes and it's just an old english term for bumble bee yeah it's a rare tio rare term for a kind of be i can't deal with freaky freaky big insects on my face for christ sake oh they're wonderful what about lunchtime here i love large dinosaurs --> | ||
=== Largest Dinosaurs <small>( | === Largest Dinosaurs <small>(35:16)</small>=== | ||
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<!-- All right | <!-- All right evan tell j about the largest dinosaur. What do you know ? Have a sorrow pod. What you've been talking to our hearts. Sore pods with largest dinosaurs land well, land rumors that they were, were they not ? Of course. And of course there is news about sora pods emanating from, of all places, the eyeless sky in scotland, j that's where they invented skype, you know. Oh, and i know skype blimps, um in sky eye looks guy. Now, seriously, look at some of the pictures of isle of skye. Take a look at it for a moment. It beautiful reminds me of some of the scenes from the last jet i movie, if you know what i mean. Is it s k y es que wiii skype without the p yeah, it is beautiful. Is beautiful. Among the many features of the isle of skye are its, muddy, shallow lagoons on the island's northeast coast. And here in an area called brothers point and among the many features of these muddy, shallow lagoons in the northeast coast of the island sky are these footprints now, not just any footprints. These are fossilized prince of sora pods, yes, and not just one or two footprint or feet print, if you like, but hundreds of these prints and multiple distinct tracts of them, it is nothing short of perhaps the most significant paleontological discoveries in all of scotland. Yep, but what made this particular discovery so news, where they recently is the age of the prints there, estimated to be between one hundred sixty four million and one hundred seventy four million years old, and that puts it in the middle jurassic period. And according to the experts, sore pod track binds of this kind are very rare, and not just because they're footprint fossils, but any fossils. I read that from the middle jurassic are considered to be a precious find, and all of this is thanks to researchers from edinburgh university. The findings were recently published in the scottish journal of geology, the lead author of the paper graduate student page to polo she explains that this track site is the second discovery of sora pod footprints on sky. It was found in rocks that were slightly older than those previously found at done tulum on the island, and it demonstrates the presence of sorrow pods in this part of the world through a longer time scale than previously known. Co author of the paper steven bruce, eight, added that there are probably thousands of tracks. If you could trace the layer of rock underground and out into the water, there are tracks everywhere. This just wasn't some lonesome dino walking through this lagoon. My guess is that the layers span at least a thousand years. Oh, wow, yeah, so really significant find and it was one of dr bruce seitz graduate students. His name is david fall fa, who discovered the first tracks in two thousand sixteen while he and some other paleontology students were exploring the coasts and they were looking for bones and teeth primarily but amid the title pools he had found. A large impression that had been colored pinkish purple by algae. And upon closer inspection, he discovered the outlines of toes and a fleshy he'll pad. And it turned out to be a sore pot footprint on the first of many to be discovered in the area. What a find these ? Yeah. These prints are not easy to find. Not easy to study, let alone find. I mean, the title conditions of the region were and are challenging, to say the least. The landscape has undergone changes in the in recent years and all the impact of weathering an erosion make these things very tricky to discover, and then to try to get out there into these regions to measure them and take your samples and everything else you have to do. It's a challenge, it's not an easy thing to do, but they were able to accurately measure the prince. And they did so using some interesting technology to scan the tracks during the low tides, which is the main time when you can get out there to see them. Polo invented what she calls the interval ometer which are to offset cameras mounted on easily portable pole was that intercom tabulator ? What was that interval ometer got so it's, how this described is how our eyes are. Two eyes allow us to see depth. These two cameras allowed her, too, and in a colleague to map the track weighs in three days as they walked around the area, and the team also used the drone hello, drone technology to get aerial images of the site yet another brilliant thrones. Thank you, but despite the challenging climate of the region, the latest discovery help cement that the isle of skype is a key reason for bringing this little understood era toe life. So big news from scotland, but their estimate of the size of the dinosaurs based entirely on the footprint they don't they haven't found the actual bones of this dinosaur. No, they have not found any remains any bones. It is all in the footprints, the largest being about two feet in diameter, so these are so they didn't find the actual largest seller pods in the that have been measured or existed. In fact, this is pretty early on in sorrow, pod evolution, some of the earliest known times in which the sore paws were around, so they were on their way to becoming the colossus size that they ultimately did become. So this is early on in that process right here, ray, so so it's just got to be like a freakish circumstance where you know the animal was walking on some type of substrate where something happened where it got preserved o j actually they're saying that that they moved around probably a lot more than maybe was previously thought they would kind of what a person would do when you just wait out to your ankles in the water and kind of splash around in the in the shallows that this or pods were apparently doing doing just that so they weren't locked into these specific spots these were among the places where they would go to hang out. Yeah, so it's a combination of j what you're saying is it's a combination of what they were walking on right held their impression man then was covered at some point in such a way that the impression you know solidified and fossilized, you know, so it's just well protected yes yeah, there were then they were later protected and now they also have to be reveal that the surface so yes it's an unlikely sequence of events but because there's so many different parts of the world some part of the world that you know at every point in any given point in time, some point in the past is being exposed in some part of the world somewhere you know what i mean ? Yeah, yeah, this this is a window into an error that we don't have a lot of windows into which is why the data is so interesting yeah whether it's the case of footprints or even actual fossilized bones where they've been kind of re mineralized and formed by the's geologic processes like it's rare it's crazy rare when you really think about it like it's a sin such a small percentage of the living organisms that ever existed and i think it's like you're pointing out j it's so important to rem remember that that's why the fossil record is so so thin even the you know kind of embarrassment of riches that we have is just a teeny tiny fraction of a fraction of a fraction of what existed --> | ||
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== Who's That Noisy? <small>( | == Who's That Noisy? <small>(42:48)</small> == | ||
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=== New Noisy <small>( | === New Noisy <small>(45:55)</small> === | ||
[Groaning animal cries and braying] | [Groaning animal cries and braying] | ||
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== Questions and Emails == | == Questions and Emails == | ||
=== Correction: Math Correction <small>( | === Correction: Math Correction <small>(48:30)</small>=== | ||
* F of Y/F – 1 = Y/((1-.3)*Y) – 1 = 1/.7 – 1 = 42.9%. | * F of Y/F – 1 = Y/((1-.3)*Y) – 1 = 1/.7 – 1 = 42.9%. | ||
<!-- couple of well one quick one not so quick emails about aja zillion people e mailed us to correct my math mistake that i made on the steven what noise they were making i thought i was talking about the rice blast fungus now we could wiped out of thirty percent of the rice crop every year right ? So yes of you and then i said and if we got rid of that we'd get that thirty percent back or increase it by thirty percent but you know i was thinking we get that thirty percent back what i said it would increase it by thirty percent but of course of you decrease the amount by thirty percent then you increase by the same amount it's not thirty percent increase it's a forty two point nine percent increase and all of the math pendants in our audience decided to write me at the same time and explain that to me they passed the test nice guys yeah totally on purpose right ? --> | <!-- couple of well one quick one not so quick emails about aja zillion people e mailed us to correct my math mistake that i made on the steven what noise they were making i thought i was talking about the rice blast fungus now we could wiped out of thirty percent of the rice crop every year right ? So yes of you and then i said and if we got rid of that we'd get that thirty percent back or increase it by thirty percent but you know i was thinking we get that thirty percent back what i said it would increase it by thirty percent but of course of you decrease the amount by thirty percent then you increase by the same amount it's not thirty percent increase it's a forty two point nine percent increase and all of the math pendants in our audience decided to write me at the same time and explain that to me they passed the test nice guys yeah totally on purpose right ? --> | ||
=== Followup: Interstitium <small>( | === Followup: Interstitium <small>(49:31)</small>=== | ||
* [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/science-and-pseudoscience-of-the-interstitium/ | * [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/science-and-pseudoscience-of-the-interstitium/ Neurologica: Science and Pseudoscience of the Interstitium] | ||
<!-- The next one is i got a the half of brazilian emails about thie interstitial in science fiction topping from last week. Yes, with this one definitely needs an update. So if you recall, one of the science fiction items last week was that scientists have discovered a new organ that that is a syria's of fluid filled cavities under the skin and in the connective tissue. And that was science. And what, of course, has been a lot of developments on this story since since we recorded the show last week. And of course, as we remind our listeners, three days goes by between the time that we record the show and when the show comes out and stuff happens in those three days. First, this is a this is not a news item, stay silent or fiction item, which means that the item just came out and yeah, there really hasn't been in it every now and then, like i'll cover a topic usually try to avoid ones that i think are going to be like, i want to see the reaction of the community that they will be picked apart, yeah. But this one i just thought i wanted to talk about that would be interesting and and so i reported it pretty straightforward but there's a there's a huge backstory here that i was not aware of the time that this came out on wednesday which is not a big deal because if that whatever happens we just talk about it the next week so here we are so ok so oh yeah yes so that the the scientists who published the paper essentially the legitimate part of what they did was they they used a new technique for imaging living tissues that could we could see that could visualize the's interstitial fluid cavities better than you can see them during usual slide preparation which you fix the tissue and that sort of evaporates the fluid it draws out sucks out the fluid publish and evaporated withdraws it out and sew thie tissue is then relatively collapsed and so they said that they quote unquote discovered this new structure which they were calling a new organ so it's a few issues with that and ah you know we brought it but at the time that calling it an organ of course is arbitrary how do you define an organ doesn't seem any less reasonable than calling the skin and oregon way like do a news item like when i first started on the show about how in oregon gets to be named in oregon that sounds vaguely familiar i feel like that and it was it's like just a lot of politics it's very political but that's kind of a side issue whether that you would consider this an organ or not that is obviously a matter of definition a lot of of the scientific community respond to this by saying yes this is really nothing new i mean the imaging yeah that's the interesting bit but the fact that there's interstitial fluid in the connective tissue nothing new yeah like this didn't just appear like we never knew this is in the body before because if you said that you said that when the when the tissues studied those that you know the in artifact of the would be that that stuff would disappear so we didn't really know the extent of it well yeah that's the that's the new baby is the is the way they were able to image it but then even like pathologists i said well we really we knew that about that artifact and that there was fluid in these tissue so this really isn't as new is the author's air spinning it so i guess it's just a difference in spin about like how significant this is those two issues like how new this is and whether you consider it an oregon not even the biggest part of the revelations that really out yeah those are just sort of interesting i was like ok, they're overhyping it and maybe it's in oregon, maybe it's not ok. And that yeah, that that that's very common to see that a lot of scientists and there and there press offices and their universities, whatever. There's a tendency to over hype the significance of a new study which tends to exaggerate our previous ignorance. And then they also hype the significant seven meaning, like by calling it a new organ that's all pretty par for the course. All right, but here's, the rial here's, the rial thing that i did know about when i went this came out. But that is good stuff since stopped agents said, is that the author is a huge component of wu, a huge fan of deepak chopra on he's using this to say, this is how acupuncture works. Oh, no talk about on and then a bunch of people and then they talked about it on science friday. They talked about it on signs friday by riff lehto fail huge i restaurant, i think feel i give us a report about it. So of course, this has absolutely nothing to do with acupuncture. First of all, do you know how acupuncture works ? It does. Doesn't find three thousand. Studies plus and you decades of research it's pretty a few things were pretty clear. One is that meridians and an acupuncture points don't exist. It doesn't matter where you start with the body or even if you stick them in the body that any alleged effect from accurate picture just a theatrical placebo that that's been pretty clearly established. There isn't a single indication for which there is robust clinical evidence that of a of an actual effect beyond placebo with that you puncture but it is a huge scam, it is absolutely a huge scam and the research is it's a really a perfect example of pseudo science. It has all of the features of pseudo science that we talk about on the show in terms of cherry picking evidence, not properly controlling for variables over interpreting studies, not doing proper controls, not really adequately assessing blinding there's it's basically rich you know the proponents are trying really hard to present noise as if it's, dana and there's just tons of p hacking going on on really essentially this is just a packaging of an elaborate placebo that is all that it is and there's basically no plausibility here, but but, you know, even for just thinking about sticking needles in this can forget about the acupuncture points in and that that is pure magical nonsense, so buddy thing is every time something physiological is like stuff is happening or anything new anatomical has shown some clowns is this is how acupuncture works right ? It's like every time we see a star in the universe that we don't we can't explain like that's aliens it's the same thing you know it's just a knee jerk argument for make parents so there is nothing in this to the study the study itself doesn't mention acupuncture there's nothing in it about it at all it is completely gratuitous and you know it it's meaningless but the author you know, of the study is using this as an opportunity just to promote his particular you know woo that he he is apparently enamored of so and they actually and the science itself isn't as good as was initially presented either making i think the image ing technique is that is the one little legit a bit in all of this but you know, massaging this all into oh a new organ we didn't know was there and maybe this is like we'll explain all kinds of things like how cancer spreads and how acupuncture works you know after even just a week of actual scientists with the appropriate expertise looking at the study and the claims like mathis is nothing this is a nothing burger and this guy's totally overselling uh these results how acupuncture we're now acupuncturist wow who would have thought called the perpetual motion machine you know you have rights like it's, like a physicist finding something to go. Maybe this is where free energy comes from, you know, it's the same same crime. So, ira, ira, what ? Our eyes. Yeah, office of ira has a he's he's, good science communicator. In general, he has a fairly consistent blind spot when it comes to alternative medicine, not a woman not uncommon, because understanding why alternative medicine is pseudoscience takes a particular set of skills, right, a particular set of expertise that not many people have. --> | <!-- The next one is i got a the half of brazilian emails about thie interstitial in science fiction topping from last week. Yes, with this one definitely needs an update. So if you recall, one of the science fiction items last week was that scientists have discovered a new organ that that is a syria's of fluid filled cavities under the skin and in the connective tissue. And that was science. And what, of course, has been a lot of developments on this story since since we recorded the show last week. And of course, as we remind our listeners, three days goes by between the time that we record the show and when the show comes out and stuff happens in those three days. First, this is a this is not a news item, stay silent or fiction item, which means that the item just came out and yeah, there really hasn't been in it every now and then, like i'll cover a topic usually try to avoid ones that i think are going to be like, i want to see the reaction of the community that they will be picked apart, yeah. But this one i just thought i wanted to talk about that would be interesting and and so i reported it pretty straightforward but there's a there's a huge backstory here that i was not aware of the time that this came out on wednesday which is not a big deal because if that whatever happens we just talk about it the next week so here we are so ok so oh yeah yes so that the the scientists who published the paper essentially the legitimate part of what they did was they they used a new technique for imaging living tissues that could we could see that could visualize the's interstitial fluid cavities better than you can see them during usual slide preparation which you fix the tissue and that sort of evaporates the fluid it draws out sucks out the fluid publish and evaporated withdraws it out and sew thie tissue is then relatively collapsed and so they said that they quote unquote discovered this new structure which they were calling a new organ so it's a few issues with that and ah you know we brought it but at the time that calling it an organ of course is arbitrary how do you define an organ doesn't seem any less reasonable than calling the skin and oregon way like do a news item like when i first started on the show about how in oregon gets to be named in oregon that sounds vaguely familiar i feel like that and it was it's like just a lot of politics it's very political but that's kind of a side issue whether that you would consider this an organ or not that is obviously a matter of definition a lot of of the scientific community respond to this by saying yes this is really nothing new i mean the imaging yeah that's the interesting bit but the fact that there's interstitial fluid in the connective tissue nothing new yeah like this didn't just appear like we never knew this is in the body before because if you said that you said that when the when the tissues studied those that you know the in artifact of the would be that that stuff would disappear so we didn't really know the extent of it well yeah that's the that's the new baby is the is the way they were able to image it but then even like pathologists i said well we really we knew that about that artifact and that there was fluid in these tissue so this really isn't as new is the author's air spinning it so i guess it's just a difference in spin about like how significant this is those two issues like how new this is and whether you consider it an oregon not even the biggest part of the revelations that really out yeah those are just sort of interesting i was like ok, they're overhyping it and maybe it's in oregon, maybe it's not ok. And that yeah, that that that's very common to see that a lot of scientists and there and there press offices and their universities, whatever. There's a tendency to over hype the significance of a new study which tends to exaggerate our previous ignorance. And then they also hype the significant seven meaning, like by calling it a new organ that's all pretty par for the course. All right, but here's, the rial here's, the rial thing that i did know about when i went this came out. But that is good stuff since stopped agents said, is that the author is a huge component of wu, a huge fan of deepak chopra on he's using this to say, this is how acupuncture works. Oh, no talk about on and then a bunch of people and then they talked about it on science friday. They talked about it on signs friday by riff lehto fail huge i restaurant, i think feel i give us a report about it. So of course, this has absolutely nothing to do with acupuncture. First of all, do you know how acupuncture works ? It does. Doesn't find three thousand. Studies plus and you decades of research it's pretty a few things were pretty clear. One is that meridians and an acupuncture points don't exist. It doesn't matter where you start with the body or even if you stick them in the body that any alleged effect from accurate picture just a theatrical placebo that that's been pretty clearly established. There isn't a single indication for which there is robust clinical evidence that of a of an actual effect beyond placebo with that you puncture but it is a huge scam, it is absolutely a huge scam and the research is it's a really a perfect example of pseudo science. It has all of the features of pseudo science that we talk about on the show in terms of cherry picking evidence, not properly controlling for variables over interpreting studies, not doing proper controls, not really adequately assessing blinding there's it's basically rich you know the proponents are trying really hard to present noise as if it's, dana and there's just tons of p hacking going on on really essentially this is just a packaging of an elaborate placebo that is all that it is and there's basically no plausibility here, but but, you know, even for just thinking about sticking needles in this can forget about the acupuncture points in and that that is pure magical nonsense, so buddy thing is every time something physiological is like stuff is happening or anything new anatomical has shown some clowns is this is how acupuncture works right ? It's like every time we see a star in the universe that we don't we can't explain like that's aliens it's the same thing you know it's just a knee jerk argument for make parents so there is nothing in this to the study the study itself doesn't mention acupuncture there's nothing in it about it at all it is completely gratuitous and you know it it's meaningless but the author you know, of the study is using this as an opportunity just to promote his particular you know woo that he he is apparently enamored of so and they actually and the science itself isn't as good as was initially presented either making i think the image ing technique is that is the one little legit a bit in all of this but you know, massaging this all into oh a new organ we didn't know was there and maybe this is like we'll explain all kinds of things like how cancer spreads and how acupuncture works you know after even just a week of actual scientists with the appropriate expertise looking at the study and the claims like mathis is nothing this is a nothing burger and this guy's totally overselling uh these results how acupuncture we're now acupuncturist wow who would have thought called the perpetual motion machine you know you have rights like it's, like a physicist finding something to go. Maybe this is where free energy comes from, you know, it's the same same crime. So, ira, ira, what ? Our eyes. Yeah, office of ira has a he's he's, good science communicator. In general, he has a fairly consistent blind spot when it comes to alternative medicine, not a woman not uncommon, because understanding why alternative medicine is pseudoscience takes a particular set of skills, right, a particular set of expertise that not many people have. So we have a great interview coming up with journalist mark linus. So mark is an environmentalist, but he considers himself a scientific environment. Plus, we're going to chat about that --> | ||
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== Interview with Mark Lynas <small>( | |||
== Interview with Mark Lynas <small>(58:11)</small> == | |||
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* [http://www.marklynas.org/ Mark Lynas], scientific environmentalist and eco-activist | * [http://www.marklynas.org/ Mark Lynas], scientific environmentalist and eco-activist | ||
<!-- | <!-- joining us now, is it ? Mark linus mark, welcome to the skeptics guide. Thanks, dave and mark, you are a journalist and author and also, and heico activists. Do you still consider yourself a current eco activists or just former ? Sometimes they see you described as a former eco activist. I'm still very much currents i would self identify i've to use that term as as an environmentalist in that i still think as i have always done that the earth faces some really catastrophically serious ecological challenges and we're not even halfway to solving them and that's been my preoccupations i don't know like twenty, thirty years so absolutely i'm still an environmentalist and i'm still an activist and i'm still a campaign it because i'm desperately working and pushing to try toe change the things that i think need to be changed yeah and i agree with that basic approach i mean i've always considered myself a skeptical environmentalist unfortunately that term has been used on you can say it was ruined it was real but it's true i think that you know it's a pie in his face i am not what i was right ? Yeah and i think that was that was my last big well that's my last iko action was a solo venture why put a big crimp ice plant into your non books face but it back in two thousand one at exactly the time when he was publishing his book skeptical environmentalist's which i objected to yeah so unfortunate the term skeptic has been abused in many quarters and that is one instance in my opinion but the concept that you know being an environmentalist think maybe be awfully nice if we had sustainable you know, practices while we're trying to, you know, really pushed the human population on this earth and pushes resource is. But we want to be completely science and evidence based. And why does there often seem to be a problem between those two things ? So, for example, earlier in your career, we'll start off talking about this topic. Earlier in your career, you were decidedly anti gmo, anti genetically modified organisms. But then, over your career, you flipped. So tell us about. That well your premise was that that the environmental movement isn't science based and i think that's largely correct but then it didn't come about because of science it came about because of ah almost like an ideological reaction to modernity and industrialism so when we when we were young earth firsters and we sat around the campfire we sang songs about that you know, the death of corporations and you know the return to the wild as it were so that kind of a fantasy off turning the clock back and that somehow returning to a you know, an underpopulated planet where capitalism and industrialism of things of the you know things of the distant past is central to the least at least the radical part of the environmental movement i was involved with that central to its dna so what well i can tell you the story of my change of mind specifically on gm owes i think also i've had to admit to myself and others that i've had a change of world view i mean i'm no i would not describe myself as a progressive i believe in progress i believe that things can and to some extent have got better and that science and technology have the power to change things for the better whereas i think in the past i and most probably in the current environment list tended to think that science makes things worse and that each time you try and fix a problem. You come up with a bigger problem. And hence you hear the implications of i don't know, thalidomide, or both, are little things that clearly gone wrong with the science and technology raised as reasons why we should essentially stop all innovation. So that's. Interesting. So you think that core to the environmental movement is this worldview, that science itself is part of the problem ? Yes. I think so and i would locate thie environmental movement i mean it's it's it's a broad spectrum of what we were thinking about the different things but if i was going to generalize i would located as part of the romantic capital are reaction against being against the enlightenment and against that kind of concept of modernity in some ways it's a very modern movement because it's a post industrial post materialist movement it only comes about in in countries and where on places where people have already sufficiency you don't find many hungry environmentalists but but that being said it's very clear what it what it seeks and it seeks the return what the protection of nature stopping pollution the idea that we can return to some kind of ah idyllic you know existence and it also has this idea that mother nature knows best that humans will have never to be messed things up that we're not discovers we think we are that we shouldn't intrude on natural ecosystems and the nature should be should be left undisturbed on dh i think that's a very different well do from a scientific one which is you know that you can understand the world you empirically that you can take an evidence based view of howto have to address issues and solve problems and that humans are actually actually clever so there's a kind of exception isn't a humans so i think this is very fun of a deep stuff, very fundamental stuff, really about about the world who have where humans are in the cosmos. So it's it's, not just about, and, i think, try and point this out to people when, when we have arguments about they say, well, what ? Why do people just why do people, why people against you most when the science is so clear, but you know, to them, the science is not the issue. The issue is human shouldn't be doing this. Human shouldn't be intruding, a tall, on the genetics of plants and animals. But, of course, we've been doing that for thousands of years. I know, i know of course, but that's the science again and that that's not the point see, we've been doing it for thousands of years as part ofthe in some ways because it's been done by trial and error rather than laboratory that's ok, you know that still counts is almost working within nature s so that you can have this concept a lot of anti gmo people would talk about, you know, like indigenous crops are old old farmer preferred drive these things like that which should be protected therefore we should never have any innovation and crop reading s o the idea than this something natural, something authentic out there which is being solid tampered with polluted by direct human interference particularly when that is using modern technologies which is especially artificial because in the lab has got the you know, the petrie dish, the test tube so if you look at, you know, the archetypal gmo image of the tomato with the syringe injecting colored liquid you can see what the imagery is there something natural being forcibly injected forcibly, you know, manipulated with with something not official. And i think that in some ways does get to the heart of what the objections are oh yeah, i agree that's definitely one part of it is thie appeal to nature fallacy the idea that nature is always better, and anything that feels artificial again. There's really a strict operational definition. It's, usually just a gut feeling, you know, looks or feels scientific or artificial or technological, is necessarily bad and there's absolutely this moral dimension to it, right, right. And you can see these. Movements and and medicine as well on again yes it is often centered around the naturalistic fallacy but the idea that herbal remedies or you know naturally the whole natural path phenomenon which i know you're well across i think is that's the medical equivalent of what's happening in food so you consult the organic and natural or ecological stuff in food is the kind of homey apathy natural path of of the medical ah side of things so i think they're very much based on the same kinds of motivations we need to return to nature nature knows best humans are intruding and polluting and destroying the you know, the natural balance so the idea of not of balance in nature is also quite fundamental even though that's that's not science based either. So the thing is none of these and these are all pre molecular biology pre darwinian concepts in many ways the idea i think that of essential ism so they i think that kind of original sin of transgenics is the technology is thiss sight this is the moving of genes between unrelated species you know, the proverbial fishing in the strawberry i mean, people just find that abhorrent most well primary parent actually because they don't i think that genes just jeans they're not just, you know, sequences of dna really who cares and that we all share lots of genes and the genes aren't immutable and they're changed the evolution is changing these things all the time, and you've got horizontal, gene transfer and something that's. What modern science tells us. But what people feel is that species have always been different and separate and it's something essential in in a species, which is its essence right on that, that somehow being altered, somehow being polluted or transgressed by genetic engineering. Yeah, it is very pre darwinian. I agree with that. So what's the what's, the right course, to take that, i mean, market you changing like the way that you handled, trying to educate people because of this. Well, i'm not sure you could even call it trying to educate people that's that's a bit too and the other one to sound too arrogant dish the problem isn't that people are ignorant the i mean yes, it would be great if everyone had more of an understanding of molecular biology and, you know, even i mean what do you most of all but that's not that's not what's going on here ? I mean, no one objected to give you a different example. Non objected to mutation breeding back in the fifties when they were using atomic radiation to cause lots of mutations and then into spin a typical changes which have some of which happened to be desirable, right ? That's like a random genetic engineering with all sorts of unintended consequences. Probably. And yet there was no objection a tall and when it came to more bargains and out again to knowing the random mutation, all stuff was grandfathered in and was was excluded from ing any regulation. And you could still have organic crops which bred mutation that using atomic radiation. So why was that ? Okay, so none of this is logical it's, not science based either it what's happened is that you've had a politicized controversy which has been fermented, if you like, by by particular ideological interest groups for for their particular reasons, so essentially they bring up organics i was going to go there because while i agree that what you're describing is one component and i think they are the most radical if you will anti gmo or environmentalists one have a world view that includes ninety percent of humans dying off they don't they're not necessarily open about that but intrinsic to their view is that they're returned to sort of the pre industrial age requires a massive diocese die off of people but i'm not sure i'm not sure that admit that actually i think the fallacy is and to me it's a delusion but i think most of them believe that you could support the current human population just using organic farming and that we could just wish away the chemicals and the farmers and use chemicals because they're evil on the chemicals companies force into s so there is a deluded world here i think which permits this level of denialism and i think that's what what independent i don't in any way think that there's a kind of oh yes let's kill if ninety percent of the population they just want to have their cake and eat it yeah i think there's there it's all out there i've seen that i've seen people when you push him against the wall they said well yeah the population will naturally decrease over time you know if we do this but the point i was getting to is that i think there are different flavors, so i think maybe not everyone has that particular world view, and i do get the sense that theo organic lobby, if you will, they're a little bit we're calculating in what they're deciding to approve and oppose, and in my this is the sense that i have for you, as you say, they're okay with mutation farming with forced hybridization with patented hybrid seeds there basically ok, using all the things that they say they're against, and they have to know what the people who are, you know, more like who are part of the organic lobby and actually know what they're talking about, at least in terms of the facts, they're not just miss informed or confused about the fact that pretty much every seed planted by a farmer is can't be reused, and it has to be purchased every year and is probably patented as well. So t me that always smelled of a just one brand attacking and demonizing another brand because it's good for business. Yeah i think there's an element of that but if you focus too much on the commercial imperatives i think you'll miss the extent to which this is an ideological movement on i think is that first and foremost yes it's now become a multi multi multi billion dollar industry and you've got the whole foods and you've got you know the some of these big organic companies which are owned by some of the largest multinationals in the world but i still think it is at heart an ideological movement and an ideological rejection off what is seen as a cz you know, industrial, chemical based agriculture and that's why it's so popular i think if it was just a marketing scam it wouldn't have anything like the emotional appeal on the attraction that it's that it's managed to achieve in the least in in rich country societies well, i think the marketing scam is exploiting the ideological movement in a lot of ways which we see in a lot of contexts as well like an alternative medicine that's a great analogy because the appeal the nature fallacy is there is well and you have those elements which are just exploiting fearmongering about technological medicine fearmongering about toxins, ideological appeal to nature but there's a corporation behind it who's just trying to sell snake oil a lot of the times so there's this you know, behind the scenes kind of marriage of those two things yeah, i'm sure that's the case that in some ways i'm even though it's not my area i regard the snake oil sales people in medicine in the medical side more harshly because i think they do direct provable damage i actually think so so well there's nothing of value it all in my view to her neuropathy all these are many of these other alternative medical treatments i think i think with organic farming actually there is there is value there the idea that we should be more cognizant off off the ecology of farmland thie idea that a healthy soil is important some things but that's you know, just the critique of the overuse of chemicals i mean that certainly has been an issue since silent spring it's been well recognized and it's still an issue today pesticides are overused and there are still big problems for runoff chemical fertilizers and so on now partly these tradeoffs with having an industrialized agricultural system which can feed the current will population which quite an achievement on dh where you to get rid of all chemicals tomorrow than you would you would certainly not be able to feed even half the world's population eso thie organic advocates don't recognize this trade offs and they try and explain them away but i don't think the corroborate what we're saying is that we have to pretend that all is well with modern agriculture because it isn't oh, absolutely, you could say the same thing about modern medicine or modern anything pretty much is always trade offs, it's always complications complicated, and we're you know, we're we're trying to push the ball forward, and i do think the ideology gets in the way, like, for example, i'm very much a proponent of sustainable farming, absolutely and there's a lot of things that we need to consider in terms of best practices. I get annoyed at the organic movement because i think that there were actually counterproductive to even their own ideas, you know, they're trying to promote, they have taken the mantle of sustainable farming, but then they have solid it with a very narrow ideology, and they're actually doing things which are counterproductive to sustainable farming, like opposing gm owes yeah, and i think actually it's worse in developing countries. So where this really bugs me is in in africa or in, you know, south asia, where you've got a lease organic, so called ecological ngos, all of which is supported by donor funds from western countries on they are sort of importing this organic ideology into the context off farming systems were food. Security is still a real issue because the levels of productivity is so low, and you've got farmers subsistence farmers, mainly who, our desk, working desperately hard, with very few inputs, very little capital, and they can't feed their families and to tell them that organic is best and they shouldn't be using chemicals. It is not just inappropriate, it's, unjust, particularly if you're stopping them using better seeds, which could, you know, survivor droughts or, you know, resist past or diseases. So that's, why i find this thiss most, this injustice is at its most extreme, and where i find i get most upset and angry about it. Yeah, i agree, and that's where i would disagree with your statement, that they're not as bad as the snake oil salesman, because, like, opposing, for example, yellow race, we actually gold, golden writes. I was just just adored on race. You're just in a block post about this today because there's ah is called to stop golden rice network, which has had a meeting in a luxury hotel in manila on they've got thirty ngos, most of which are again supported by donor funding, including one of them from the swedish government oversees a day see and they're supporting this so called peasant farmer group to go out there and try and stop golden rice reaching, you know, the hundred of thousands of children who are suffering who lose their sight in many of whom dy so yes, that is a very extreme example of what happens when when she and no ideology, you know, and the kind of that kind of environmental philosophy turns pathological, if you like, yeah, that's pretty direct harm in by opinion or vandana shiva, who literally said she would rather have indians starved and e g m o, you know, food donated after, you know, a tsunami ? Yes, i can you don't start. Don't get me started on my machine. You can she call me a rapist ? So i think i have ah, way trying to rape the earth, right ? Well. Specifically, what she said was when i made ah speech, you know, saying that jim was ok and i changed my mind on this issue she's, she said. It was like saying rapist should be free to rape. So i thought, i mean, not obviously, that was offensive and inappropriate, but i thought was interesting as well, because the idea of you know what, what rape stands for ? She really sees it as a kind of technological rape of the somehow that this is abominable intrusion of off nature, you know, being being carried out of mother nature, being raped by technology. So i think in some ways it was a window into her into the real core of harder ideology that she said that and you can't you cannot argue with that once somebody's mind it has been, you know, found it finds itself in that place, you know, like you were saying before it's, not about education. At this point, you really is about people's core belief systems. No, give it give up points for being consistent. She's also said that she opposes everything's happens is thie since the european enlightment so that we've learned nothing over the last five hundred years. So she does at least fully reject science as a method on she's the full i would say full scale relativists she doesn't. She believes that science is just another belief system, no more or no less valuable and previous ones in other cultures. So that's kind of iko postmodernism taken, you know, from a well should she takes, she tries to project that as a sort of authentic indian viewpoint, but i think actually it's a very modern phenomenon, very western in many ways, too. Yeah, in my opinion, you know, vandana shiva is the poster child for somebody who thinks they are righteous but is actually evil if you look at her actual positions and what she is doing it's actually extremely harmful, but she's attitude, which i would characterize is morally evil, but she's doing it with the full belief that she is a good and righteous person, is doing what's best for her people and that's the power, i think of ideology. Well, i'm sure a lot of a lot of damage over history shows has been done through people who believe they're doing the right thing and but you know, if you look at what her ideology is, i would i would i would characterize it is fully reactionary in the sense that she wants to defend peasant agriculture, but you think, what does that actually mean ? Well, a it doesn't apply to her when she's traveling first class, you know, jetting around the world to give speeches to western audiences as this great group that be she's saying that so and she calls herself a feminist, you saying that women in village india should stay working, you know, in their traditional fields, they should not have any additional life choices. They should basically stay in a life of drudgery in a very ossified, patriarchal society. Now to me, that's um, that's not just like a marry onto another point of view. That's a folly conservative reactionary point of view because it denies the agency of some of the poorest people in the world. So i'm happy in my own ideology to oppose that and say, no, i'm a progressive, i believe that people should be ableto make choices should be able to change their lives should be able to decide for themselves what kind of future they want yeah, i aren't totally great. Ironically, you know, even though she isn't western in a in a lot of ways, if he that reflects the privilege that we often see where you have the privileged members of western developed countries dictating to, as you said, like poured members of developing countries, what they can and cannot do based upon, you know, their own ideology so they could feel better about themselves. And i do have. I mean, they have to be. I agree, really fully delusional, or just incredibly in, curious, because, you know, they are advocating a position that can lead to, you know, poverty, death, blindness, whatever. In these people, they really cared about these people. They couldn't possibly take the positions that they do. They be gonna look what she is, what she's doing, she's telling me, she's very popular in the west, you can charge forty thousand dollars a speech, according to her speaker oversee. But what she's doing is telling guilt stricken post colonial western audiences what they want to hear, which is that the peasants in india, happy as they are. The modernization is bad that you in western countries, should be feeling guilty about being modernized, and you should be looking to go back to the land. And, you know, back to sort of medieval culture, which is what they still have in india and that's what we seek to protect. So it's ah, just like that's. Why, i would say it is so romantic world view, because it's, fully in opposition to everything that's happened since the industrial revolution. Mark, what projects are you working on now ? I well, apart from selling my gmo book, i'm about to embark on a new version of six degrees, which is my book on climate change, which i did way back in two thousand seven, so i'm going to do a kind of twenty twenty update of that because lots changed in the science and people keep asking me almost every day what some what's the future got in store in terms of their climate science as we know it. So i'm gonna spend another couple of years going back, going back and seeing just how you know how catastrophic is our future, according to both where we are in terms of emissions and on what the science says and what's the title of your g m a book title of gemma book is seats off science why we got it so wrong on gm owes well, mark, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a fascinating discussion. Thanks, mark. Thank you, thank you, i'm on it. I'm a big fan of the podcast, so it's great and always fascinating to talk to you both. --> | ||
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== Science or Fiction <small>(1: | == Science or Fiction <small>(1:22:05)</small> == | ||
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== Announcements == | == Announcements == | ||
=== Book Progress <small>(1: | === Book Progress <small>(1:34:42)</small> === | ||
<!-- All right, so guys are book production is moving along nicely, so that way we have our final cover, which you could see on amazon and elsewhere, where you can pre order either the e book or the hard cover. And we just got the internal design for us to pick over and to prove and make, you know, tiny twiki suggestions, but look, i thought i thought i would go over some of the chapters the book is divided into different sections. There's one section is neuropsychological humility and that has chapters on memory on hyperactive agency detection. You guys all know what that is ? Of course. Hip negotiate video motor affect all the things in which although the glitchy things that our brain does and then there's a section on meta cognition which is thinking about thinking critical thinking, right ? This wood has a discussions on things like the dunning kruger effect. Confirmation bias. Fundamental attribution, error anomaly. Hunting data. Mining all kinds of stuff like that. And then there's a section on science versus pseudo science, where we talk about things. Kockums, razor. The demarcation problem. P hacking witch hunts placebo effects on then iconic examples of pseudoscience and deception. The clever hans effect. The hawthorne effect. Cold reading free energy. I learned stuff about all of these topics when we were doing the book were researching it. Like there we did. We went deeper on these, then yes. Then we had before and raises a chaperone and raise. The story is so much better than what i thought it was a region that stevens. Favorite chapter. He wrote how to be cool. Like me ? Yeah, that's like that's the biggest way i know that there is a fun section on what we call adventurous and skepticism where each of us writes a chapter about some some topic that we confronted where we had sort of a skeptical arc on we even have a chapter in there by perry perry's only contribution to the look on then skepticism and the media and then and death by pseudoscience of growers and then changing yourself and the world there's a lot of stuff in that book aa lot one hundred ninety six pages or thereabouts yeah current estimate depending on exactly how it shakes out but way guesstimate wait you know we wanted to basically have this be like everything you need to know about critical thinking and scientific skepticism to be a good skeptic, right ? Well, obviously you know there's still a ton of of little topics to cover there's some things in here that are representative but we basically covered everything you need to know that was the goal. And you know, i think that this would be a good introduction in two scientific scripts and skepticism for anybody who is not familiar with it and it'll be a good reference for people who are already into it but they want a thorough you know, treatment walk through if i go here i hear is that this is everything yeah, it fills in the blanks, you know, even for us, like we were saying, steve like doing the research and editing the book and doing all the work to put all of this data together, like i didn't realize until when we were done, i'm like, wow, i still had so many holes in my understanding of things and just might my overall knowledge so that's. Why, i think, even for a seasoned scientific skeptic, you know their little plug, the others there's, there's, good stuff in there. The skeptics guide to the universe is the name of the book's. Just search on that on amazon or barnes and noble, or i think i'm not sure where else it's available, but it will come up and we do appreciate it if you pre order the book because that will help get the book noticed. Get it on best seller lists. You know we wantto your books either take off in the first week or they don't, and pre orders of the best way to make that happen, please --> | <!-- All right, so guys are book production is moving along nicely, so that way we have our final cover, which you could see on amazon and elsewhere, where you can pre order either the e book or the hard cover. And we just got the internal design for us to pick over and to prove and make, you know, tiny twiki suggestions, but look, i thought i thought i would go over some of the chapters the book is divided into different sections. There's one section is neuropsychological humility and that has chapters on memory on hyperactive agency detection. You guys all know what that is ? Of course. Hip negotiate video motor affect all the things in which although the glitchy things that our brain does and then there's a section on meta cognition which is thinking about thinking critical thinking, right ? This wood has a discussions on things like the dunning kruger effect. Confirmation bias. Fundamental attribution, error anomaly. Hunting data. Mining all kinds of stuff like that. And then there's a section on science versus pseudo science, where we talk about things. Kockums, razor. The demarcation problem. P hacking witch hunts placebo effects on then iconic examples of pseudoscience and deception. The clever hans effect. The hawthorne effect. Cold reading free energy. I learned stuff about all of these topics when we were doing the book were researching it. Like there we did. We went deeper on these, then yes. Then we had before and raises a chaperone and raise. The story is so much better than what i thought it was a region that stevens. Favorite chapter. He wrote how to be cool. Like me ? Yeah, that's like that's the biggest way i know that there is a fun section on what we call adventurous and skepticism where each of us writes a chapter about some some topic that we confronted where we had sort of a skeptical arc on we even have a chapter in there by perry perry's only contribution to the look on then skepticism and the media and then and death by pseudoscience of growers and then changing yourself and the world there's a lot of stuff in that book aa lot one hundred ninety six pages or thereabouts yeah current estimate depending on exactly how it shakes out but way guesstimate wait you know we wanted to basically have this be like everything you need to know about critical thinking and scientific skepticism to be a good skeptic, right ? Well, obviously you know there's still a ton of of little topics to cover there's some things in here that are representative but we basically covered everything you need to know that was the goal. And you know, i think that this would be a good introduction in two scientific scripts and skepticism for anybody who is not familiar with it and it'll be a good reference for people who are already into it but they want a thorough you know, treatment walk through if i go here i hear is that this is everything yeah, it fills in the blanks, you know, even for us, like we were saying, steve like doing the research and editing the book and doing all the work to put all of this data together, like i didn't realize until when we were done, i'm like, wow, i still had so many holes in my understanding of things and just might my overall knowledge so that's. Why, i think, even for a seasoned scientific skeptic, you know their little plug, the others there's, there's, good stuff in there. The skeptics guide to the universe is the name of the book's. Just search on that on amazon or barnes and noble, or i think i'm not sure where else it's available, but it will come up and we do appreciate it if you pre order the book because that will help get the book noticed. Get it on best seller lists. You know we wantto your books either take off in the first week or they don't, and pre orders of the best way to make that happen, please --> | ||
=== NECSS 2018 <small>(1: | === NECSS 2018 <small>(1:38:39)</small> === | ||
<!-- in ninety seven days, nexus two thousand eighteen's happening guys july twelve to the fifteen can't wait. Eso general registration has opened we have everything all the info about the about the conference up online, i could see our complete list of speakers, you could see all the workshops, all the nighttime activity, this is going to be one hell of a year. We've got a lot of patriot on members coming in as well, which i'm really excited we're going to meet me in great i'm going to be setting that up with a lot of listeners, i think that's going to be a lot of fun, we have the stu private show and, ah, a couple of other things that we're trying to pull together, that we can't say right now, but if they happen, it would be really cool. So please do come to nexus two thousand eighteen, we will all be there and, you know if you aren't, then you won't know how cool it is to be there, right ? I mean it's. Pretty simple for me. J j i really like my workshop topic for this year, so for the workshop, i'm going to be talking about how to read a scientific paper finally way yes, we go all used after. That talk you will have some idea how to evaluate the quality and the actual findings of a sign to the paper and at this and also how to read a science news item about a scientific paper right ? So it's not just even if you don't find your way back to the original paper itself you're just reading journalists right around i will tell you how to two think about that how to evaluate and like how to really dig dig down so i think it's a good course skill set tohave all right, well, thank you all for joining me this week welcomes they've good to be joined to you and until next week, by the way next week is us to you episode number six six six oh boy, we've got to do something that's somewhat way we'll see we'll see well until next week. This is your skeptics guide to the universe --> | <!-- in ninety seven days, nexus two thousand eighteen's happening guys july twelve to the fifteen can't wait. Eso general registration has opened we have everything all the info about the about the conference up online, i could see our complete list of speakers, you could see all the workshops, all the nighttime activity, this is going to be one hell of a year. We've got a lot of patriot on members coming in as well, which i'm really excited we're going to meet me in great i'm going to be setting that up with a lot of listeners, i think that's going to be a lot of fun, we have the stu private show and, ah, a couple of other things that we're trying to pull together, that we can't say right now, but if they happen, it would be really cool. So please do come to nexus two thousand eighteen, we will all be there and, you know if you aren't, then you won't know how cool it is to be there, right ? I mean it's. Pretty simple for me. J j i really like my workshop topic for this year, so for the workshop, i'm going to be talking about how to read a scientific paper finally way yes, we go all used after. That talk you will have some idea how to evaluate the quality and the actual findings of a sign to the paper and at this and also how to read a science news item about a scientific paper right ? So it's not just even if you don't find your way back to the original paper itself you're just reading journalists right around i will tell you how to two think about that how to evaluate and like how to really dig dig down so i think it's a good course skill set tohave | ||
== Signoff == | |||
all right, well, thank you all for joining me this week welcomes they've good to be joined to you and until next week, by the way next week is us to you episode number six six six oh boy, we've got to do something that's somewhat way we'll see we'll see well until next week. This is your skeptics guide to the universe --> | |||
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| SGU Episode 665 |
|---|
| April 7th 2018 |
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Marsbees: a swarm of robot bees that could fly in the thin Martian atmosphere and deliver information from their sensors. |
| Skeptical Rogues |
| S: Steven Novella |
B: Bob Novella |
C: Cara Santa Maria |
J: Jay Novella |
E: Evan Bernstein |
| Guest |
ML: Mark Lynas, British author |
| Quote of the Week |
Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each. |
| Links |
| Download Podcast |
| Show Notes |
| Forum Discussion |
Introduction, Cara back from the Amazon[edit]
Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.
What's the Word (7:20)[edit]
News Items[edit]
S:
B:
C:
J:
E:
(laughs) (laughter) (applause) [inaudible]
Cell Phones and Cancer (13:43)[edit]
Robot Bees on Mars (27:08)[edit]
- NASA funds project to study feasibility of using robot bees to study Mars from a new perspective [2]
Largest Dinosaurs (35:16)[edit]
Who's That Noisy? (42:48)[edit]
Answer to previous Noisy:
New Noisy (45:55)[edit]
[Groaning animal cries and braying]
Questions and Emails[edit]
Correction: Math Correction (48:30)[edit]
- F of Y/F – 1 = Y/((1-.3)*Y) – 1 = 1/.7 – 1 = 42.9%.
Followup: Interstitium (49:31)[edit]
Interview with Mark Lynas (58:11)[edit]
- Mark Lynas, scientific environmentalist and eco-activist
Science or Fiction (1:22:05)[edit]
Theme: Animals of the Amazon
Item #1: The pirarucu is a large carnivorous fish that grows up to 3 meters long and has teeth on its tongue.[4]
Item #2: The Cyclosa spider is tiny, but it will build a large decoy spider replica in its web out of leaves, twigs, and dead insects.† [6]
Item #3: Pink river dolphins get their pink color from the shrimp that is their primary food.[7]
| Answer | Item |
|---|---|
| Fiction | Pink river dolphins |
| Science | Fish with tongue teeth |
| Science | Large decoy spider replica |
| Host | Result |
|---|---|
| Steve | win |
| Rogue | Guess |
|---|---|
Jay | Large decoy spider replica |
Bob | Large decoy spider replica |
Evan | Large decoy spider replica |
Cara | Pink river dolphins |
Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.
Jay's Response[edit]
Bob's Response[edit]
Evan's Response[edit]
Cara's Response[edit]
Steve Explains Item #1[edit]
Steve Explains Item #2[edit]
Steve Explains Item #3[edit]
Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:34:13)[edit]
Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.
– Plato, from The Republic (~428-347 BC), ancient Greek philosopher
Announcements[edit]
Book Progress (1:34:42)[edit]
NECSS 2018 (1:38:39)[edit]
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.
Today I Learned[edit]
- Fact/Description, possibly with an article reference[8]
- Fact/Description
- Fact/Description
References[edit]
- ↑ Science-Based Medicine: The Nation indulges in fear mongering about cell phones and cancer
- ↑ NASA: NASA funds project to study feasibility of using robot bees to study Mars from a new perspective
- ↑ National Geographic: Huge Dinosaur Footprints Discovered on Scottish Coast
- ↑ Britannica: pirarucu
- ↑ NatGeo: These Spiders Build Decoy Dummies of Themselves
- ↑ Wired (article 6 years older than NatGeo video): Spider That Builds Its Own Spider Decoys Discovered
- ↑ Dolphinspedia: Why Are Pink Dolphins Pink?
- ↑ [url_for_TIL publication: title]
Vocabulary[edit]
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