SGU Episode 61

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SGU Episode 61
20th September 2012
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SGU 60                      SGU 62
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
P: Perry DeAngelis
Guest
JR: James Randi
Quote of the Week
Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work.
James Randi
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Show Notes
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Introduction

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, September 20^th, 2006, and this is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Rebecca Watson...

R: Hello.

S: Perry DeAngelis...

P: Good evening.

S: ...and Jay Novella.

J: Last but not least, thank you.

S: Good evening, everyone.

R: Hey there, Steve.

J: Hey Steve. What up there, Doc?

S: Good to have you as usual. So the big news for this week, this is news specific to the Skeptic's Guide.

P: This is news of importance to the rational mind world round.

S: Sure, everyone is familiar with James the Amazing Randi, who is currently the, what's his title at the JREF anyway, by the way?

R: The Amazing One.

J: Head honcho, yeah.

P: Owner.

J: Demand.

P: Starter.

S: He's currently the head honcho at the James Randi Education Foundation, or the Amazing One.

R: This thing is named after him.

S: You figure. James Randi and the JREF is now going to be associated with the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. James will be giving us a weekly segment, a three to six minute commentary every week that we will include in the show. So we'll have a James Randi segment on our show every week. We're all very excited about it. I can't remember exactly how the proposal came about, but...

P: Well, Rebecca sort of started it. We've got to give her some kudos.

R: Thank you, Perry.

P: It's true. I mean, you've got to give her some kudos here.

R: It's a collaborative effort, though. I don't want to take all of the credit. I'm just happy that Randi was down with it and that we got that going.

S: That's right. And we spoke briefly with Randi a few days ago about this. And so let's hear what he had to say.

News Items

Randi to join Skeptics Guide (0:39)

• James Randi will be contributing a weekly segment to the Skeptics Guide called "Randi Speaks"

S: With us now is James Randi. Randi, welcome back to the Skeptic's Guide.

JR: It's good to be here.

S: Now, Randi, as way of introduction, he is the director of the James Randi Educational Foundation. He is one of the world's few true celebrity skeptics. He started his career as a magician and has gone on to become the preeminent investigator of the paranormal, supernatural, and occult powers. He manages the JREF Million Dollar Psychic Challenge. He is the author of numerous books, including Mask of Nostradamus, Flim Flam, The Faith Healers, and many others. And the reason why Randi is joining us today is to announce a very exciting development. Randi has agreed to record a segment for the Skeptic's Guide. He's going to become a regular contributor to the Skeptic's Guide.

JR: Yes, it'll be about a five-minute tirade, I believe.

S: That's right. Now, Randi, previously you had been considering doing your own podcast, which, of course, is a very time-consuming endeavor. And we raised the possibility of simply producing a segment for the Skeptic's Guide. And you thought that that was a good idea.

JR: Yeah, I think that a few folks can do a good job of it. I'll go along with that.

S: So the format of the Skeptic's Guide is going to remain pretty much the way it has been. But this will be the capstone. And in addition to what we already have, there will be a brief segment where basically just a monologue from Randi where you're going to talk about whatever issue you want to raise for the week. And it'll be just another venue for you to spread your skepticism to the world.

JR: Well, I don't know whether I like that term, capstone, because I've learned from my studies over the past, almost a century, moving in on it, that capstones often get hit by lightning, if they're not properly grounded. So I'll take that chance, however.

S: Yeah, well, your career has been somewhat of a lightning rod, though, so maybe that's an appropriate metaphor.

JR: Well, that's an interesting thing, too, just as an aside, you know. I once got a note, eight or ten years ago from a physics professor at some college here in the United States who said he was doing a book on high school physics. And you want to know if I had ever seen, now this is in the days before Google and various other things, if I had ever seen a picture of lightning striking a lightning rod because he needed to illustrate his book when he spoke about lightning rods. And I wrote him back and I said, well, lightning doesn't hit lightning rods if they're properly grounded.

S: That's right.

JR: And he wrote me and he said, damn, I found out you're right. That just doesn't happen. It's only if they're poorly grounded that they will serve as a conduit to an electric charge in the clouds above. But if they're properly grounded, what they actually do is leak off positive charges from the earth, which neutralize the negative charges in the atmosphere, and therefore lightning doesn't hit the building.

J: Oh, so they actually are there to prevent the building from being hit.

JR: That's right. They're not there to attract the lightning. And if they do that, then you can get a refund because they weren't properly grounded.

P: I was just wondering if you would say that you were properly grounded, Randi.

JR: Oh, yeah, I've always been. As a matter of fact, you've seen that copper chain that I wear on my ankle and drag on the ground. Now people comment on it, but what the hell, I'm safe from being struck. That's good.

S: Well, you're grounded in reality, at least.

JR: There you go. Okay. At least that.

S: And that's a good example of the kind of witty, skeptical banter that you will hear on Randi's segment. Again, the purpose of bringing Randi on today was to announce his welcome and exciting addition to the Skeptics Guide.

JR: By the way, that's all the witty riff-r-k that I have in my arsenal, so I've just said it.

P: It's all downhill from here.

JR: Yes. The rest of it is going to be really rather dull.

P: Excellent.

S: Well, you'll have to wing it, I guess.

JR: Yeah, I guess.

S: Well, thanks again, Randi. Thanks for joining us to help make the announcement. We certainly look forward to your first installment.

JR: Yes, well, I've got to figure out what I'm going to say and about what, but I'm sure something will come to mind.

J: Thanks, Randi.

S: Something will come up. Thanks a lot. Take care.

JR: Bye-bye.

S: So Randi has already sent us his first segment, and we'll be playing that later on in this very show, so stay tuned.

R: Super.

Men more intelligent than women? (6:29)

DailyMail: Men are more intelligent than women, claims new study

Ohio State Research: Women Outpace Men in College Degrees

S: One very sensational news item that has been talked about quite a bit I think in the last week is an article published in the Daily Mail that claims that men are more intelligent than women Rebecca, I'm sure...

R: Ugh, you guys are never going to shut up now.

P: Goes without saying, yeah.

R: Yeah, I guess if you add them all together then yeah.

S: (laughs) Collectively, collectively.

R: You guys, collectively, are intelligent.

P: Some studies are a waste of money when common sense will lead you to the same conclusion.

R: Uh huh. I couldn't agree more.

P: But I must say, I must say...

R: What must you say, please?

P: When Jay sent out an email about this, gloating, and Rebecca sent it back with numerous corrections, both grammatical and spelling, it was rather embarrassing to the male race.

R: Thank you.

P: I must say, I'm going to have to say, it was really quite a touché. Jay, you dropped the ball.

R: It was really bad, Jay.

B: Wait a second, wait a second. I talked with Jay, he did it on purpose just to boost your self-esteem.

R: Oh, yeah, right, I appreciate that Jay, shucks, thanks, now I'll just get on back in the kitchen.

J: First of all, Rebecca, unless you're making me a drink, I don't want you anywhere near a kitchen. (laughter) Second of all, I typed fast and furious, I didn't think Ms. Anal Retentive... whatever you want to add onto the end of that, has to say say about how crystal clear my typing is, the fact is that I get my information out there.

R: Yeah, you get your information out there like a third grader.

S: Turning back to the study, "British-born researcher Jean Philippe Rushton who previously created a furore," as the News Daily article goes, "by suggesting intelligence is influenced by race, says the finding could explain why so few women make it to the top in the workplace." And he further claims that the glass ceiling is basically "due to the inferior intelligence of women rather than any discrimination or lack of opportunity."

R: You know, I really don't even see how this needs comment because it's just so absurd, it's so poorly thought out and done that it's, that's my position on this, it is just stupid. It could only have been thought of by a man.

S: Indulge me while I investigate this a little more deeply. Basically he is claiming that his statistics show that men have a 3.65 point higher IQ on average than women. Now the main weakness of this entire approach is that IQ, although, not without any meaning, is a very, very complex concept. The very concept of intelligence is very abstract and complex. It begs the question, "what is intelligence?" It's obviously no one thing, it's many, many things. What exactly are you going to measure as intelligence? We actually can't directly measure any neurological, biological function that is intelligence.

P: What is IQ alleged to be?

S: Yeah, it's basically, you pick some markers of some abilities that you're inferring relate to intelligence, like memory or mathematics or verbal skills or visual-space relationships, you sort of break it down into some specific quantifiable tasks that people can perform, but there are choices that are made in deciding what to measure and how to measure it, and it boils a very complex phenomenon, a very abstract phenomenon in many respects, like how do you quantify creativity? Well, you can't, so you choose the things that you can quantify. We can't boil something that complex down into a single number so...

B: Sure you can, just hook your head up to the Krell machine, see how high it goes, that's how smart you are.

S: Right. (laughs) That's a reference to the Forbidden Planet which...

R: Dorks!

S: We are uber-geeks, OK? But...

R: Yeah, now I know.

S: ...yeah, we don't have the equivalent of the Krell machine where you get one number of overall brain power, we have no such thing. So you end up with like this 3.63 point difference. The average, by definition, by the way, is 100. That really within the noise of the system, it's hard to really make...

B: I think it's a joke.

S: ... yeah it's hard to make any conclusions about function in the real world from that.

B: 3.63 is ludicrous. If he came up with something like 10 or 15 it may be something to think about, but 3.63, I laugh when I read that, you've got to be kidding.

S: Given how fuzzy the whole concept is.

R: Right, I was about to say that if it were a focussed number, if it were something that we could clearly quantify, then a difference of 3.6 might in fact be statistically important, but the fact that it's, the margin of error has got to be so much more than 3.6.

J: Yeah. Steve, how many people were in the test?

B: Three. (laughter)

S: I don't have the exact number, but the point I'm trying to make is: don't confuse statistical significance and clinical or scientific relevance. Something could be statistically significant but clinically irrelevant. And I think that's the case that we have here. Statistical significance is only about gathering enough numbers. If you have enough individual people, if you have enough data, you can get statistical significance. The question is, "is that much of a difference in what's being measured meaningful in the real world?" And that is what really hasn't been established. Now what you can use these kinds of testing to say compare the difference of something very specific and quantifiable, like you might be able to say some subgroup scored higher on tests of visual-spatial skills than some other group, at least then you're talking about a very clearly defined, specific task, but intelligence is way too fuzzy to talk about in this way, and the conclusions that he reaches from it go well beyond the data that he's using, the idea that differences in academic achievement are due to this 6.3 point difference, that's where it's absurd, where he tries to draw real-world conclusions from this fuzzy data.

R: And where I think he clearly shows his absurd bias, like he was obviously going for something there, and that was...

J: That's a good point, I due agree that there's a bias involved here.

S: It's poor thinking, which makes you suspect that there's a bias, sure. Interesting there's a couple of other issues that came out in the past week along the same lines. There was research also published that shows that women are still consistently outperforming men academically, at least up to the bachelor's level. This is a report from Claudia Buchmann, she's an associate professor of sociology at Ohio State University. And what they found basically is that better grades and more incentives explain why women are outpacing men in college degrees, this did not look at post-graduate, or the highest echelons of academic achievement, just at the bachelor level. In 2004, women received 58% of all bachelor's degrees in the United States compared with only 35% in 1960, so in the last 44 years, women have basically outpaced men numerically in achieving academic achievement. And that dovetails with other studies which show that basically women have better academic, school, classroom skills than guys do. They're better organised, they're more motivated, they're less distracted by the kinds of things that boys are distracted by, they mature faster which helps them in school-age. One complexity in that is that maybe eventually guys catch up because women just mature in these respects quicker. But they don't catch up by college-age. Now I further noticed, and this is something that you blog about, Rebecca...

R: Yeah.

S: ...the National Academy of Sciences put together a panel to investigate the question of why there's a difference in the achievement between men and women at the highest levels of academia in science and engineering and mathematics, and their conclusion was that it is not due to any biological difference, that any biological differences between men and women are insignificant and that differences are entirely due to biases within the process of career development and promotion within academia.

R: Right, yeah I mean that's about it. They decided that those, any differences pale in comparison to the incredible difference that's shown to men versus women as they, basically from the beginning of schooling up through their career and professional development.

S: It's a 200 page report, I read like the 20 page executive summary, I didn't plough through all 200 pages yet but I think, I agree with actually most of the findings although I think that I'm not sure why they put the committee together the way that they did because it sort of invites criticism, for example, it was an 18 person panel, there were 17 women and 1 guy. To anybody who might be critical of their finding it sort of stands out, why was this issue disproportionately women?

R: Yeah but Steve, I mean that would be, I think that would be fallacious because you have to look at their results, you have to look at the data that they were looking at, and the results that they found, and not the people.

P: It's still a point of criticism and there's no need.

S: Yeah I agree with that Rebecca, but my point was appearance, and I'm not sure why it ended up that way.

R: Well probably that the people who are most interested in why women aren't getting ahead in science are women who are not getting ahead in science, who struggle to get ahead in science.

S: Yeah, you're probably right, but that exactly makes my point, that you don't want people who are motivated to have certain findings because they feel that this is an issue and many of the women who were on this panel actually were already on record as to what their opinions were. Rather, you want to put together people who have relevant expertise or who are either balanced on both sides of the issue or who have not expressed any prior strong opinions. It seemed to be, it seemed that they were stacking the deck, and that appearance, whether or not it's true or affected the outcome, I think will haunt this panel and this finding.

R: I agree with that. I just don't think that it's a valid criticism, I think it's a...

S: That in and of itself is not a criticism of the findings, but I have to go on because I read through all of their specific findings in their summary, and if you go look at the summary, again we'll link to this, every single point is in the same direction, basically arguing why women have the same ability as men and why their inability or historically why they haven't succeeded as much as men at the highest levels of academia is due to biases against them. When a report like this basically makes, I think they had in their summary there were 8 major points that they made and every single one was completely and strongly in the same direction, I always, that just raises a red flag for me, whatever the topic is. Within any complex or controversial issue there is going to be some mitigating factors or some uncertainties in the data and they really didn't allow for any equivocation which I think, again, just raised a red flag for me. They also didn't address, going in to it I was interested to hear what they were going to say about a couple of points, and they didn't address them, which also makes me a little suspicious. For example, their first finding was "women have the ability and drive to succeed in science and and engineering" which I agree with, but they didn't address, do women have the same interest in engineering as men do, which some prior studies have suggested that statistically or on average that maybe they're just not interested as men are in engineering. So they didn't even address that, and I was curious about that omission. Obviously they thoroughly reviewed the science, on the surface I agree with most of their findings, but I think that they have both the appearance of maybe having gone into this with an agenda, and I think that the way that they put their report together supports the sense that maybe that they had an ideological view going into this process.

R: Well Steve, my only thought on your last point about there not being much study into whether or women are actually interested in science and engineering is that I agree with you in that I am also curious about what a study of that would show, but also that in this case their job was to find out why the women who are interested are being turned away or aren't reaching the upper echelons of academia as opposed to the men who continue on, the women are dropping out, so the women were obviously interested at some point and then they lost out. So I can kind of understand why that wouldn't be a focus of the study, though I agree that, I think it would be interesting to see them address it.

S: Right. It brought up some very interesting points that I had not considered previously, like for example, academics who have a spouse who does not work full time and therefore shoulders a disproportionate amount of the domestic burden actually do better or have more successful careers than academics who have a spouse who works full-time. And 90% of women academics have a husband were only 50% of males have a wife who works full-time, so there's a disparity there that would affect the ability of a woman to succeed in her career that you might not immediately consider, for example. So I thought the report was very good in terms of exploring those kinds of issues.

Pastor accused of rape (19:41)

S: The last bit of news that caught my attention the past week. Actually, Perry, you sent this one to me. This is a report about a woman charges pastor with two rapes during an exorcism.

P: Ah, yes. Unfortunate incident.

S: So this comes from the Post Chronicle. This was, the article says, apparently confusing orgasms with exorcisms. A Fort Worth church pastor has been accused of raping a woman twice. So this is Leonard Ray Owens, 63, allegedly raped a 22-year-old woman who says that she was raped on two occasions. The first time, he claimed that she was being possessed by a spirit and lesbian demon. And during the exorcism, he basically pinned her to the ground and raped her. Interestingly enough, like a month later, he raped her again, which means that she still kept a relationship with this guy.

P: Obviously still being troubled by the lesbian demon.

B: You think this guy would have said, well, the demon temporarily jumped into me, made me rape her, and then jumped back.

J: Oh, Bob, come on. The guy's a rapist, not a liar.

P: And the jumping demon defense has been so disproven, it's totally overused.

B: How do you disprove that?

P: Come on, the demon made me do it, please.

J: That doesn't hold up in court and he knows it anyway.

P: It doesn't.

S: Not in this country. Other parts of the world, recently an incident where a man killed his brother or something and claimed that it was a goat that transformed itself into his brother after he shot it, and he was possessed by a demon during the whole thing or something.

R: Sadly, those cases are really, really common, especially in places like where that occurred, which was Nigeria, where it's a very common belief that people can become possessed by spirits.

S: Perry had his top ten most horrific exorcisms.

P: Top five we did, yeah.

S: We had the top ten on the notes page and we had the top five on the podcast. I don't know, did this make your top ten list, Perry?

P: It did not. This would be a newer case.

S: I mean, would this make your top ten?

P: Believe me, had I known about the lesbian demons, they would have been front and center.

R: Yeah.

P: Had I known.

S: But I think it reflects the basic notion that the exorcists in these kind of cases often are on a power trip of one type or another. I mean, their position as the exorcist in the social circles in which they're operating is largely about their own personal power and charisma. And this, I think, is a manifestation of that.

P: Why do you suppose the woman, in all seriousness, why do you suppose the woman was still around him a month later?

B: Well, they don't give enough details to really determine that.

S: But I mean, the assumption that I would make would be that because she was in the thrall of him as a religious leader. It took her a while to really realize that, hey, this is wrong. I better turn him in. She didn't do it right away.

R: It happens with religions, it happens with cults, it happens with families and relationships.

S: I'm sure there were a lot of cult-like aspects to this scenario, this relationship.

R: Yeah.

Interview with Phil Plait (22:36)

• The Bad Astronomer joins us to discuss the new naming of UB313(Xena) as Eris, the whole planet definition hubbub, and other astronomical news. Article about Eris and its moon Dysnomia: http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/planetlila/

S: Well, there were a lot of astronomical items in the news recently, and we asked Phil Plait, the bad astronomer, to join us to help us sort out the whole planet-naming hubbub that's been going on. Let's go to that interview now. Well, joining us again this evening is Phil Plait, the bad astronomer. Phil, welcome back to the Skeptics Guide.

PP: Hey, thanks.

R: Hey, Phil.

J: Hey, Phil.

PP: Sort of a low-energy thanks. Hey, thanks!

R: That's more like it.

PP: It's great to be here.

R: Let's get the cartoon Phil to come out.

S: So Phil is kind of becoming our resident astronomer for those kinds of questions on the show, and there has been a lot of astronomical news recently, and he has agreed to help us out to sort through some of the developments. The big news in the past week was the official naming of UB313, which Rebecca insists was previously named Xena.

R: Rebecca insists. Phil, back me up on this.

PP: The original name was actually UB40, and they found out it was as red as red red wine.

J: That was a reggae group in the 80s.

PP: A very, very terrible reggae group.

S: Well, Phil, tell us about this naming process.

PP: Okay, here's the deal. When you discover an astronomical object of some import, like an asteroid or a planet or something like that, the orbit has to be determined, and that means that you have to observe it over some period of time. The longer you can observe it, the better you can nail down its position, and then you crank through a bunch of unbelievably complicated math, and that gives you the orbit of this object. There's a bunch of rigmarole you have to go through, but basically the discoverer can submit a name to the International Astronomical Union, which is an august group of three to four thousand astronomers, something like that, worldwide. They're split up into different groups, different what are called commissions, and one of them is the naming commission. They will take under advisement the name you want, and on occasion they can reject it if they feel that it's inappropriate or doesn't match, I don't know, a theme that is usually stuck with, like for example, features on Venus are typically named after women. That's not always true, but that's mostly true. And so they go through this, and so when 2003 UB 313 was discovered by Mike Brown and some other guys from Caltech and around the world, they had to wait and really determine its orbit very well, and once it was for sure that this thing was out where it was, past Pluto and it's pretty big and all that, then they could submit a name. Now the story gets kind of interesting because I talked to Mike Brown the day after all this fufara hit the fan, and he said that he submitted the name only nine days before the IAU announced the International Astronomical Union, announced the name to the world, which is, as far as I know, a record time. Usually it takes months, so I have a feeling the IAU is under some sort of public relations pressure to do this.

S: From what I've been reading, the two years over which the unofficial designation of UB 313 was Xena sort of created a little bit of an awkward situation for them because the public was reluctant to give up this somewhat popular name, so maybe they felt pressured to get it over with and get the official name out there quickly.

PP: Well, I don't know about how much the public liked the name. I think people were calling it that, and I never really got a sense that people were going to dig their heels in with this like they would with Pluto being a planet or not, but given that it's the IAU, the International Astronomical Union, the American public is only one of a larger group of people out there who, well, don't have a say but may influence the decision, and I get the impression that the IAU doesn't really necessarily bow to public pressure.

S: So that was mainly an American phenomenon then?

R: No, no, Xena was big in the UK.

PP: Oh, was it?

R: Yeah, I think so.

S: I would imagine New Zealand would have been pretty popular.

R: Yeah, New Zealand.

PP: The show or the object?

R: The show. The show.

PP: I never liked it, to be honest. I thought Hercules was better.

R: Didn't you see Lucy Lawless in the little bra and the...

J: Yeah, but they were cheesy.

PP: You know, dressed up as the warrior, she doesn't do that much for me, but you know, I saw her...

R: But cheesy is what made it.

PP: I saw her on Battlestar Galactica and she looked a lot better. She's better as a blonde, I think.

S: Yeah, very nice.

PP: But anyway, back to less mundane topics here.

R: Sorry, sorry, back to your asteroid.

S: So the new official name is...

PP: Eris. Xena was a nickname, and when they discovered it had a moon, of course they had to name it Gabrielle.

S: Which is Xena's sidekick on the show.

PP: After Xena's sidekick, that's right. When the name became official, they named it Eris, which is E-R-I-S. And this name is extremely cool, although it irritates me because nobody's going to pronounce it correctly, because it's spelled E-R-I-S, so everybody's going to pronounce it Eris. That's okay, though. Eris was the goddess of strife and discord, which is cool. The Roman equivalent is Discordia. This is a Greek name. So that's pretty cool. Eris was the one who gave Paris the golden apple and said, go off and pick one of these four women. And it was three, Rebecca?

R: Yeah. Yeah, three. It was Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera. He picked Aphrodite, who had promised him the love of any woman he wanted. And so with that, he chose Helen.

PP: I see, okay. Eris was a troublemaker, and she's the one who gave the golden apple to Paris and told him to pick between some goddesses and which one was the one he liked the best or the most beautiful or whatever. And Rebecca is the mythology expert here. And it's what caused the Trojan War. She did this on purpose, knowing that no matter who he picked, it was going to be some grief-making process here. And so she's pretty evil. That's what they named the new object.

R: So now, Phil, I'm wondering, was there some political reason behind the naming of this planet with the wars that are going on currently?

PP: Rebecca asks this with malice of forethought, knowing that I wrote in my blog at badastronomy.com about this blogger, this right-wing blogger who was accusing Mike Brown and his team of trying to be liberal left-wing moonbat pinkos and naming this planet and its moon or this object and its moon after the current strife that's going on in the world. And I talked to Mike Brown, and he said, well, look, they were looking for names. And when they stumbled on Eris, they liked it. But when they realized they could name the moon Dysnomia, which is a lot of people say they don't like it. I think it sounds pretty cool. But Dysnomia is the goddess of lawlessness. And if you come across Eris, and I think she was sort of a sidekick of Eris, so they work together. So you've got Eris and Dysnomia, and Dysnomia means lawlessness, and Xena was played by Lucy Lawless, you're done. You found the name you want. And so they stopped there. I thought that was really cool.

S: Interestingly, that's also a neurological term, although it's pronounced Dysnomia. And it means the inability to name, which I thought was incredibly ironic. That they're having all of this difficulty.

J: Oh, God, that is awesome.

PP: I looked it up, and I thought it was just a memory loss. It was a memory lapse where you can't remember something.

S: Anomia is the inability to name, and Dysnomia is sort of difficulty with naming.

PP: Isn't that funny?

S: That was the first thing I thought of when I saw the word Dysnomia. They named it after a neurological disorder. Is this a joke on the whole difficulty they've had with the Xena and the Eris thing? I don't know.

PP: Well, then that's a triple pun or a double pun. Because actually, the reason they stopped with Eris is because the goddess of strife and discord makes sense given how much trouble the idea of Pluto being a planet or not is causing right now. So it's just all around, these names are just about perfect. The other problem that I have is that it's very close to Eros, which is how it's supposed to be pronounced, which is a fairly large potato-shaped asteroid which passes near the Earth every now and again. NASA sent the near-Earth asteroid rendezvous mission there a few years ago, and it took all these incredible close-up pictures of the asteroid. And I had a friend who said, it's actually pronounced Eros when everybody actually pronounces it Eros. And I said, it's great that it's actually pronounced Eros, but nobody's going to call it that. So at some point you're going to have an asteroid named Jack, and everybody will get that right.

S: Where do you fall in the Charon-Charon debate?

PP: It's actually Charon. It's Greek, and it's C-H. Case closed.

S: Now, that's true, but what I read was that the astronomer's wife was named Charon, so he wanted it pronounced after his wife, even though it was spelled after the god, because of the nomenclature of the name.

R: What's he going to do, rewrite the dictionary?

J: He wanted you to say it in a Boston accent as well.

PP: I've heard that story as well, although not with a Boston accent, and I've never confirmed it. Maybe one of these days I'll email the guy. But we have another object that orbits past Saturn. It's this weird, icy body that occasionally grows a tail, and it's called Chiron. C-H-I-R-O-N. And so if that's pronounced Chiron, then I think Charon should be pronounced Charon.

S: Yeah, well, I agree. Now, I was under the impression that the planets were named after Roman gods, and Eros is a Greek god. So are the rules suspended for the icy dwarfs, the dwarf planets?

PP: I think so. It's not a planet, so it's not a major planet, or a classical planet, or whatever the heck you want to call it. So I don't think they have to name it in the same sort of thing. On the other hand, if they find another object farther out, and it would have to be farther out, or else it wouldn't be called a planet, and it were big enough to be round, then I guess they would have to give it a Greek name. And I have no idea what they'd name it.

R: A Roman name, you mean?

PP: Excuse me, a Roman name.

R: Does that mean that we're going to have to call Pluto Hades now?

PP: No. Once the name is there, I think it's stuck. But Pluto does have a number now, and they only give numbers to minor planets. So for the IAU to come out with an announcement, what's called a circular, it's like an email that gets sent around saying, we've named these two objects, Eros and Dysonomia, and Eros is bigger than Pluto by a smidgen. And in the same announcement, they say, oh, and by the way, Pluto now has a minor planet number 134340. That's really rubbing salt in it, I think. Really?

J: Hey, Phil, let me ask you a personal question. Do you have any emotional response to them changing Pluto's designation?

PP: I think the whole thing is really silly. Trying to define what a planet is and isn't is just going to curb your thinking. It's going to make people think of it as one thing or another, and it's going to make it harder to understand what it truly is. I have personal experience with this because I used to always think of these objects called brown dwarfs. These objects are called brown dwarfs, which are sort of these objects in between planets and stars. As a stellar astronomer, I came from the angle that these things are more like stars. And I went to a meeting about brown dwarfs, and these guys were talking about weather in their atmosphere. And I thought, weather? They're stars. And I thought, oh, wait, no, they're not. They're a hybrid. And so when you put a name on something, it can really channel your thinking, and you might miss something important.

S: I agree with that, but just to take the other point of view for a second. There is certainly a need in describing the natural world to attach categories and labels to things. The example I've given in this case is it's like talking about mammals. The boundary of mammals is as fuzzy as the boundary of planets, but we still need a concept for mammals, even though what is a platypus?

PP: I'm not sure we do.

S: A mammal or not?

B: It's a monotreme.

S: Categories are a way for basically to organize our knowledge about the natural world. They should reflect, hopefully, an underlying understanding of the nature of things. And we also have to understand that they're always imperfect and not turn them into mental traps.

PP: Yeah, if you understand that, then that's fine. If you don't let it trap your thinking, then I don't have too much of a problem.

S: What's the alternative?

PP: I don't know.

S: Having no categories? I mean, I think there is no alternative. We just have to use them properly and not turn them into traps.

J: I like what Phil said, though, because it's much more of a romantic, less strict way of looking at things just for the sake of understanding and having a relationship with these. I think everyone kind of has an emotional or spiritual relationship with these astronomical things. So I think the way I took, Phil, what you said was that it was kind of like, don't let yourself get... You see the forest for the trees. Don't get caught up in the verbiage. Just understand what these things are and absorb it.

PP: Right. Also, when I talked to Mike Brown, again, the guy who discovered Eris and some other objects out there that may also get names like EL61, which is this potato... Well, it's actually an extremely rapidly spinning object that's also roughly about the size of Pluto out there. And it's probably going to get a name here pretty soon as well. But when I was talking to him about this whole thing, he actually said, what we're trying to define is actually what a planet is as a concept. And I went, oh, maybe I like it better to think of it as a concept and not a definition because a concept is fuzzier. And if we think of it as a concept, then we... Again, it's kind of funny how words work. To me, a definition is rigid. It's in the dictionary. A concept is fuzzier, well, by definition, har har. And so if something is sort of on the borderline of being a planet and we think of a planet as a concept, I don't have so much of an issue with it, which is maybe just as ridiculous as arguing over what a planet is by definition.

S: No, but that's actually interesting because I think that's basically the approach that I was taking to it just naturally, especially as a physician because we deal with concepts. Everything we deal with is fuzzy basically in medicine. So I'm basically very comfortable with the notion that we have to define and talk about things with an understanding that everything is fuzzy around the edges. So trying to come up with a category for planets that was fuzzy around the edges did not bother me one bit. I was used to it, I guess.

PP: Well, people think that they have a pretty firm grasp on what something is and what it isn't. And I love arguing things like this when you try to ask them to define life and you ask them if a virus is alive.

S: Exactly.

PP: It's like, well, I don't know. And I can argue that fire is alive. So...

J: Yeah, but that means you're crazy.

PP: We'll go into details here. That means I'm crazy? By almost any definition of life, fire will fall in that category. And yet we all understand that it's not alive. But I'm not so sure. So there you go.

R: Phil actually keeps fire as a pet.

PP: That's true.

S: Let me change the topic a little bit here. I read yesterday there was a report about this is the National Research Council panel of the National Academy of Sciences. They basically strongly endorsed NASA's plan to return to the moon. Did you read the report or have...?

PP: I got an email about it, but I've been away for a couple of days, and so I haven't been able to catch up on everything yet. I heard something that they strongly endorsed going back to the moon, but also that they had a list of scientific things that have to be done. How to explore the moon scientifically. And it talked about, for example, exploring the South Pole of the moon, what's called the Aitken Basin, this enormous impact region where there might be ice. And to use the moon as a base for astronomical observations, as well as observations of the Earth and the Sun, things like that. But I only skimmed over it, and it looked like it was a pretty solid report.

S: Yeah, although they're saying it's an interim report and the full report will be mid-2007.

PP: Right. Okay. Well, call me back.

S: We will. Maybe we'll certainly have you back. Now, the other naming thing that happened recently was the naming of the lunar spacecraft, which has a very cool name, Orion, which is a name I've always loved. And that was leaked or something prematurely, wasn't it, the name Orion?

PP: I didn't keep track of all of that because to me that's just nonsense. You're going to have a huge unveiling of a name and somebody leaks it an hour early and everybody gets upset. Dude, it's a name. It's not like you've got a rocket. When you have a rocket and you unveil it and somebody reveals that an hour early, that's a big deal. I'm also not thrilled with the name, to be honest. There already is a project Orion. This was a concept in the 1960s and 70s.

B: Nuclear?

PP: Yeah, it's a rocket that has, it's basically a giant dish with an enormous living space on top of it. And the dish is upside down and you blow up atomic weapons inside that dish and those give a push. It's Newton's, well, it's one of those laws anyway, and it blows up and it pushes on the dish. And basically, this giant rocket sits on top of the dish attached to it by a bunch of shock absorbers. And then you can get a rocket into space pretty quickly when you lob atomic bombs under it. And this is a pretty interesting idea. It was shelved for being, for a lot of reasons, it's too dangerous to launch it from the ground. You'd have to build one in space. But the Outer Space Nuclear Treaty made it, you couldn't blow up bombs in space, and so that was pretty much that. Technically, this thing could work. And maybe someday we'll build one, we'll amend those things for peaceful purposes and amend the treaty. But Project Orion has a rich history. They were doing some tests, they were doing all kinds of things. And so to name the rocket that is a little bit close to that. But Orion is a fine name for the missions and if they want to do that, that's cool.

J: There's also a constellation named Orion.

PP: Well, no matter what, they're going to use a word that means something else, unless they name it, you know. They just name it Rebecca.

R: They should.

B: You know, I think I read somewhere that it's actually not pronounced Orion, it's Orion.

R: And my name's actually pronounced Rebika. It's a little known fact.

PP: Well, the rockets are named Ares, which is the Greek name for Mars, the god of war. And I think that's a direct tip of the hat to the fact that they want to use these rockets eventually to get back to Mars. But we'll see how all this pans out. The way things are looking, NASA is going to be using slingshots to get rockets into space. If Congress doesn't get off sitting on its hands and actually fund NASA. The whole initiative to go back to the moon and to go to Mars is costing a fortune. It's coming at a time when NASA has to scale back the shuttle, but it has to finish the space station. So there's a timeline on this. We will be done with the shuttle on this date, which means they have to launch a certain number of shuttles because it's going to take a certain number to fix to finish the station. So they've got a fixed date and a certain number they have to fly. That gives you a timeline. They have to launch every X number of months. And that costs money. In the meantime, when they lost Columbia, that delayed everything by a couple of years. They had to retrofit the shuttles, which cost money. They have to design the new rockets, which cost money. And with Katrina and Iraq costing a lot of money, a lot of it came out of NASA's budget. This is an issue. NASA's not getting any more money and they're being asked to do a huge amount more work.

S: There was something floated recently in Congress in terms of giving NASA an extra billion dollars. Did that ever go through?

PP: Right. That was Barbara Mikulski, who was a senator from Maryland. And oh, boy, somebody I can't remember, probably somebody from Florida or Texas, where they have big space centers. Or possibly California, saying we need to give money to NASA so that we can at least make sure that they can do what they want. And I don't know what happened with that. Barbara Mikulski is a huge supporter of NASA because Goddard Space Flight Center is in Maryland, as well as the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is the scientific arm for Hubble and will be the scientific arm for the James Webb Space Telescope, which is the "replacement" for Hubble. It's not really replacement, but it's a huge infrared telescope that will be launching in a few more years.

S: That's right. That centers at Johns Hopkins, which is my alma mater.

PP: Yeah. It's on the Johns Hopkins campus. That's correct.

S: That's right. That's right. Well, Phil, thanks for giving us the update. We appreciate you coming back.

R: Thanks for coming on, Phil.

J: Thank you, Phil.

PP: All right. Thanks a lot, folks.

S: Well, always great to have Phil on the show. I'm sure we'll have him back frequently in the future. Let's go on to your emails.

Questions and Emails

OBE's and Lucid Dreaming (43:25)

Hi guys.

Love the show.

I have a question concerning out of body experiences. I have had two experiences with OBE's, one was when I was seriously ill with malaria, yes I was having really disturbing hallucinations, but at one point during the illness I had a very tranquil and lucid episode. When I opened my eyes the ceiling was about half a meter from my face, and when I turned around I saw myself lying in the bed beneath me. Obviously this gave me a fright and caused me to go back into my now uncontrollably shivering body. The second case was when while sleeping I sat up in bed and turned around to still see my body there sleeping.

Now I don't believe in a soul or any supernatural occurences, but I was wondering what natural explanation could there be. Possibly lucid dreaming? or am I just nuts? (that another story involving mercury poisoning)

Thanks again for the best podcast on the net.

Oh before I forget monkey's rule!! and Rebecca gets another marriage proposal.

Thanks Hamish Law

South Africa

S: The first email comes from Hamish Law from South Africa. I think this is our first South African email. And Hamish writes, "Hi guys, love the show." By the way, I always want to get lots of people give the salutation of hi guys, which I always thought was kind of a Northeastern American-ism. And I wonder, do they say guys or are they doing that deliberately because we say guys?

P: Frankly, it's sexist and I'm appalled by it. (laughter)

B: It's kind of a generic term it's morphing into, it seems to me.

R: Every time we get an email that says hi guys and not hi guys and the lovely Rebecca, I'm offended.

S: Right.

B: Oh, geez.

P: There's a lot to be offended about.

S: Well, Hamish writes, "Love the show. I have a question concerning out-of-body experiences. I've had two experiences with OBEs. One was when I was seriously ill with malaria. Yes, I was having really disturbing hallucinations. But at one point during the illness, I had a very tranquil and lucid episode. When I opened my eyes, the ceiling was about half a meter from my face. And when I turned around, I saw myself lying in the bed beneath me. Obviously, this gave me a fright and caused me to go back into my now uncontrollably shivering body. The second case was while I was sleeping, I sat up in bed and turned around to still see my body there sleeping. Now, I don't believe in a soul or any supernatural occurrences, but I was wondering what natural explanation could there be? Possibly lucid dreaming or am I just nuts? That's another story involving mercury poisoning, he writes. Thanks again for the best podcast on the net. And oh, before I forget, monkeys rule. And Rebecca gets another marriage role."

J: Oh, Christ.

R: Hooray. I like that one.

P: This is a person of high intellect.

R: Oh, yeah, definitely.

P: Clearly.

S: Okay, so Bob.

B: The first question that jumps to mind is how much can you trust an experience when you were sick enough to have hallucinations? So if you're hallucinating, anything that happens, got to be a little bit suspect. I think the general consensus among the scientific community is that the OBEs, out-of-body experiences, aren't truly out-of-body experiences. I think what makes the most sense to me, and the emailer actually mentions it, lucid dreaming, I think, is probably the most likely explanation if he wasn't indeed having an out-and-out out-and-out hallucination. Probably wasn't lucid dreaming. He even says in his email, he says he opened his eyes and saw he was at the ceiling, and later on he said that he actually was asleep in bed. So there's a definite association.

P: I absolutely agree with Bob. Steve, you may or may not know this, but the "hallucinations", that come with malaria are delirium, aren't they?

S: Well, delirium is an aberrant state of mind in which you have a decreased level of consciousness. It sort of comes and goes, waxes and wanes, as we say. And hallucinations may be one symptom of delirium. You can also hallucinate from other problems, too, like being psychotic, even though you're not delirious. So hallucinations can occur in a couple of aberrant states.

P: My point I'm trying to make here is that malaria creates delirium.

S: Well, certainly while he was seriously ill and shivering, meaning he was having rigors, he probably also had a high fever. So he was almost certainly delirious at that point in time.

B: Okay.

S: Yeah.

P: I suffered about a delirium in 2000, and believe me, nothing that you perceive, can you trust at all. I didn't have, not really hallucinations, like this sort of.

S: Delusions.

P: The point is, we've talked on this show before, and certainly very often in real life, what with Steve being a neurologist, the slightest alteration to your brain and reality can go right out the door.

S: Absolutely.

P: And certainly illness fits that category.

S: Now, Bob, give us a quick bullet on what is lucid dreaming?

B: Lucid dreaming is essentially dreaming, but realizing that you're a dream. You essentially wake up in your dream. I mean, it's happened to me. It's Steve, you've experienced them. Rebecca, you've experienced them. They're fascinating. They're really interesting. But you're actually, and there's levels of lucidity. You can be a little bit lucid or extremely lucid, but you're actually, I've said to myself in lucid dreams, wow, I'm lying in bed asleep right now and everything I see is just a creation of my mind. I mean, you can become that much with it that you kind of realize that. You kind of like have this aha moment, like, oh, wow, this is a dream. None of this is real. And there are some people that even that still doubt. I can't imagine. They doubt lucid dreaming is a real phenomenon. But I think it's pretty, pretty well established by guys like Dr. Stephen LaBearge and others.

S: It's very well established. There's nothing mysterious about it. I mean, while you're in REM sleep, while you were dreaming, that is a specific state of consciousness, you know, where only certain parts of your brain are functioning. It's a different state of consciousness than being awake. Lucid dreaming is you can kind of think of it as being somewhere in between the two, in between the dreaming state and the wakeful state where you have enough reality testing to realize that what's happening in the dream is not real, can't be real, and therefore you must be dreaming.

B: It's kind of like you pass this critical threshold where you've got just enough neurons firing for you to realize that, wait a second, a pink elephant in my supermarket, something's out of whack here, where normally you'd be like, oh, what's up, Fred? You know, you wouldn't even think about it.

S: Right, because normally in a dream, fantastic, surreal things happen and you take it for granted. They don't strike you as being unreal because your dreaming mind accepts those things. It doesn't have the reality testing that your waking mind has. But it's a very unstable state, the lucid dreaming state. You will tend to either really wake up, so become fully awake, or dream that you wake up, in which case you become fully dreaming again and you lose your lucidity.

B: It's very frustrating.

S: Now certainly it's possible in this case that he was having a lucid dream where he thought he was awake, but he really was still in some kind of a dream state, although I don't think that that's the explanation for these episodes.

R: Well there's also the possibility that he's actually having an out-of-body experience.

S: That's an unnecessary hypothesis and I'll tell you why.

R: But I'm being totally serious here and I would recommend for him to look into it because why take our word for it when you can actually test it? And I know that myself, I taught myself how to lucid dream by keeping track of when I was falling asleep and making sure I constantly thought, oh, I'm dreaming.

J: Yeah, you question what mental state you're in.

R: Right. And so I learned to be able to go into a lucid dream immediately upon falling asleep. So I'd recommend that the listener try it out because it's a fun thing to figure out how to do. And once you're able to do that, you can try it out and you can have these out-of-body experiences. And if you still think that it might be an out-of-body experience, just a friend of mine did a test himself to try to figure it out. He took a deck of cards, shuffled them up so he couldn't tell which card was which, and he picked one out at random and he put it face up on a high shelf. And then he went to sleep and he did his lucid dreaming and he tried to look at the card. It's a pretty easy way to tell if you're actually having an out-of-body experience. You should be able to tell what that card is.

P: Could he tell?

R: No, unfortunately he could not. So it turns out he was not.

S: But the case is stronger still for a neurological phenomenon, and it's actually a little bit tangential to lucid dreaming itself. So let me give you again in a nutshell what the neurology that's been fleshed out about this is. There's actually part of our brain, mainly in the frontal lobe, that creates the sense that we are in our bodies. The sense that we are in our bodies and that our bodies are in the physical universe, in the real world. Those are two distinct phenomena that our brains create, and there are specific localizable parts of the brain that create those phenomena. And if you interrupt those parts of the brain, you can create an out-of-body experience. You will lose the sense that you are inside your body. And you will actually even hallucinate seeing yourself there, and you separate from your body. So we can create these on demand by using certain drugs that we know affect that part of the brain.

B: Ketamine is that one?

S: Like ketamine will do that. We know that anoxia states can produce that. We also can hook electrodes up to your brain and stimulate them and produce these at will. So this is a purely neurological phenomenon. This guy was probably delirious at this time. And that's enough to say that he had now OBE because his brain wasn't working, and this part of his brain in particular was not working. People have these sometimes during seizures. And if you have a seizure consistently in the same part of the brain, the seizure is typically the same experience over and over again. And I've personally had patients who've had their epilepsy syndrome was when they have a seizure, they have an out-of-body experience because that's the part of their brain the seizure was in. So this is pretty well established as a neurological phenomenon. Let's go on to the next email.

More 9/11 nonsense (52:36)

So I've been browsing the web and i've found a theory that I haven't heard before, that israel (or the jews) did the world trade center (9/11). They offer as evidence that not a single jew died in the attack, and a cubic time theory, have you heard this one? And what do you think about it?

Gary Adair

California

Cubic time theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Cube

S: This one comes from Gary Adair in California. He writes, "So I've been browsing the web and I found a theory that I haven't heard before, that Israel, or the Jews, did the World Trade Center, 9/11. They offer as evidence that not a single Jew died in the attack in a cubic time theory. Have you heard this one and what do you think about it?" The whole the Jews were responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center and the evidence that no Jews died in the attack is just a complete and total fabrication. I actually heard this the day after 9/11. I mean this goes back to right after 9/11. This was the immediate rumor in the Arab street, as it's now being called, and in the Arab mosque that the people were basically being told this was a Zionist or a Jewish plot. And that the notion that like none of the Jews showed up for work at the World Trade Center that day was part of this basically just an urban myth that was spawned immediately after 9/11. It's total and utter nonsense.

P: This is rabid anti-Semitism.

S: That's what it is.

P: That embraces many parts of the world and certainly many individuals is despicable. You know, this emailer, I'm shocked that he hadn't heard this theory before. I suppose it's possible. Could also be somebody who just wanted us to comment about this, but I'm glad because it gives us the ability to excoriate it. It's absolutely outrageous.

S: It is. It's utter nonsense and it's just naked anti-Semitism. That's basically what it was. There's really nothing more to say about it. There's no evidence to talk about it. There's no evidence. There's nothing to it. He did bring up, though, he made this aside about end the cubic time theory, and I must confess I hadn't ever heard of that before.

R: Man, you guys are so out of the loop. No, the time cube guy, he is an internet phenomenon.

S: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Now, I went to his website and read as much of it as I could as I could stand. So this guy, and we'll have the link, go to his website. This guy believes that there are four simultaneous days in every rotation of the Earth and that time has this sort of cubic symmetry and it's hard. There's some kind of other symmetries in the universe having to do with the opposite sexes, whatever. There's nothing cogent in this guy's theory that I could derive from his website.

B: And here's some examples of that non-cogency here, just some quotes that struck me. Here's a good one. "Humans are cubic forms that rotate a four-corner face lifetime." Well, I thought that that's obvious. "Physicists are forbidden to acknowledge time cube." You imagine you are forbidden to mention this.

R: The first rule of time cube is don't talk about time cube.

B: And then here's another good one. Minus one times minus one equals plus one is stupid and evil.

J: Well, math is evil now.

S: In the middle of this stream of consciousness, completely incoherent gobbledygook, he has a link in big bold letters that underline, separated off, the greatest thinker. That's it, just the greatest thinker. You click on it and it goes to a page that just says that he is the smartest human being who's ever lived.

R: QED.

P: Steve, a little earlier off air I'd asked you what makes this madman stick out from the legion of madmen that we deal with and what was your reply?

S: He has a web page. That's it.

R: No, there's just something about time cube guy. He's like your friendly neighborhood crazy. He's the guy that you pass every day on the corner with the sign who's yelling and he's got the big scraggly beard. Sometimes he throws his feces at you. So you have a certain spot in your heart just for this time cube guy.

S: This guy's name is Dr. Gene Ray, although his doctorate is self-given. He gave himself a doctorate because he's the smartest guy in the world.

J: What's his doctorate in?

R: Crazy.

S: So the thing is, we joke about this guy, but in all seriousness, this guy is diagnosable. He's mentally ill. You could literally diagnose him from his web page. He has delusions of grandeur, paranoid delusions, ideas of reference and ideation. He has diagnosable features of a psychotic disorder, probably would garner the diagnosis of a schizophrenic. He almost has what we call word salad, which your thoughts become so disconnected and tangential that it becomes absolutely incoherent nonsense. And that's basically what his website is. There really isn't a single cogent sentence in the whole thing. He's also a raging anti-Semite as well and also a racist.

R: Naturally.

S: Which you can kind of glean from his website. Again, he doesn't really have a fully formed sentence anywhere in the thing. It is entertaining in a way, but I almost feel a little guilty because I feel like we're sort of making fun of the mentally ill with this kind of thing. What I found very interesting, though, I think the most interesting thing that I got from this whole time cube thing is that you can see, stripped raw and in a very clumsy and obvious fashion, the elements of all the other cranks that we deal with, who are just able to put sentences together better than this guy and are not quite as delusional as this guy is. But if you think about all the other cranks that we deal with, they use basically the same logic that this guy uses. They have the same basic kind of statements that they're so incredibly intelligent and insightful and that everyone else doesn't know how to think for themselves, and there are conspiracies against them, and the fact that academics won't debate him proves that he's correct, and this guy even has a $10,000 reward for anybody who can prove him wrong. So he has all of the same features in there of all other cranks, it's just on steroids because he's nuts, you know.

The Denial Industry (58:34)

Thought this might make an interesting topic for you:

Guardian: The Denial Industry

Dave Machin

S: The next email comes from Dave Matchen who writes, "Thought this might make an interesting topic for you." and gave us a link. The link is to an article in The Guardian called The Denial Industry. This is about a new book, largely by George Monbiot, who tells the bizarre and shocking new story of Exxon Mobil's attempt to completely muddy the waters in terms of the whole global warming issue. So basically what this is about are either corporate or other interests who create these bogus, either social or academic sounding institutions that basically exist in order to promote an ideology in the guise of science. So in the case of Exxon Mobil, it's to deny the existence of manmade global warming as a problem or as a phenomenon in order to protect the profits of Exxon Mobil. So I think there's a lot of truth to this in that they also talked about the tobacco industry and previously I had spoken about the secondhand smoke literature and how it was essentially poisoned by tobacco industry sponsored studies. In response, in the global warming phenomenon, they're not so much creating studies, they're not really generating information, they're just taking the information on one side of the debate and then harping on it, even when it's later overturned or disproven or even when the researchers say that my conclusions were wrong and I've revised them, they still basically just cling to whatever information denies the existence of global warming. But it's interesting and I do think that unfortunately that this is part of the politicization of science that we are seeing in the last 10 years or so is the certain groups or individuals who could not basically get their opinion promoted through standard academic or scientific institutions basically just made up their own institutions, gave them scientific sounding or legitimate sounding names and then started to promote their ideology as science through their own organizations. But it's a spectrum. I think smoking causing cancer, that's pretty well established. I think the denial of that is fairly pseudoscientific. Global warming I think is more controversial, although I do think, as I've said on the show before myself, I think that there is sufficient evidence to say that there are concerns about manmade global warming, enough to drive policy to try to minimize it in the future.

P: Steve and I disagree on that, but I would say that any organization that is created, simply give it whatever kind of scientific sounding name you want, if it's just created politically, then it's not going to hold up. Nothing they produce will stand up to scrutiny.

S: I think that you shouldn't create an organization dedicated to a scientific conclusion.

P: Of course.

S: It's okay to advocate for a disease or advocate for a group or advocate for a concern, but when you advocate for a scientific conclusion, that's a fool's errand, in my opinion, because that conclusion may change. And then what do you do? Close up tent and go home? No, people never do that. They cling to whatever their conclusion is that they organized around.

Randi Speaks (1:01:58)

• The Uncompromising Observations of a Veteran Skeptic. Each week, beginning with this debut segment, James Randi gives a skeptical commentary in his own unique style. This week's topic: Exorcism

S: Well, now it's time for the first installment of Randi's new segment on our show, which he calls "Randi Speaks".

JR: Hello, this is James Randi speaking. I'm... rather fascinated with the subject of exorcism; I hope that some of you may have an interest in it, too, as the latest thing to take the fancy of the naive. I've just heard through The Hollywood Reporter that CBS has given a pilot commitment to an exorcism-themed drama from the creator of Joan of Arcadia, Barbara Hall and producer Joe Roth. The project, they say, is inspired by the real-life experiences of Bob Larson, an expert on cults, the occult, and supernatural phenomenon. Oh, come on. It continues, "through his ministry, Larson teaches the principles of spiritual freedom and the many ways that demons attack human beings." Well, I needn't go on on that. It's crap from end to end and obviously these people are embracing it. Well, I just did some re-figuring, because my good friend Klaus Larsen in Denmark sent me a note saying that some of my figures were wrong on a recent entry. I just did a piece on Father Amorth, who is the Vatican-approved official exorcist of that prestigious organization. I said there that he had claimed he had done 30,000 exorcisms in his 80-odd years or so. Well, turns out that that's wrong. The Vatican officially claims that he has done 40,000 since 1984, which gives him even more impressive rate of success, if any of them do work, and I've yet to see any evidence of that. That would mean that he'd have to do something like 15 a day, and if you saw the film The Exorcist, you would know that they;they take a long time to do. This is a very busy man, to say the least, or someone, somewhere along the line, is lying. Is that possible? Do you think? It may be. A good comment from a reader of The Hollywood Reporter says, "Oh, my. Where to start on this one? CBS was once known as the Cadillac of television networks." Well, I don't know when that was ever said, but nonetheless: "How they could have somehow missed the dozens of TV, magazine, and newspaper exposés of this con man"—and he's speaking about Bob Larson now;"for the devil is simply more supernatural than anything Larson proposes to have encountered on his incredibly bogus television show, and that it invokes the spirits of Walter Cronkite, William S. Paley, and Edward R. Murrow, hoping that they would forever haunt the halls of CBS." I think that's an excellent idea. Oh, by the way, producer Joe Roth is experienced in this field. We wouldn't want you to think that he doesn't have any expertise; after all, he is the executive producer of the 1990 feature film The Exorcist III, so he obviously knows about these matters. Right? I ask you, if you will, go to Google and look up Bob Larson. I think you'll have quite a revelation there when you see all the scams this man has worked over the years, but CBS doesn't seem to care. Do they? I just hope, sincerely hope that this isn't the beginning of a whole range of television programs that's gonna be based on exorcism. Otherwise, we're gonna see people vomiting pea soup left and right and all the other charming things that were done in The Exorcist films. Regardless of what CBS eventually does on after all, it is only a pilot commitment so far, we can be very sure that the Vatican will continue with its very profitable business of exorcisms. After all, without demons to get rid of, where would their business be? They'd just be selling, oh, rather cheap wine and bread on a Sunday, and not much bread at that, because I've seen what they serve out during the mass. I don't know how else they would make money. Maybe they'd have to get real work and real jobs. We couldn't really expect that now, could we? After all, this is the church, where you're not supposed to really do anything. But you wear funny dresses and funny hats and you walk around and throw water over people in the audience. I don't know, I think I missed my calling. I can wear a funny hat, too, and on occasion, I've proven it. But I don't think people would pay to see me walking around and throwing water on them. This is James Randi.

S: Thank you, Randi. That was excellent as always, and we certainly look forward to your future commentaries on our show. Well, let's move on to science or fiction.

Science or Fiction (1:07:05)

Item #1: The Cassini probe to Saturn has discovered a new ring around Saturn, but more significantly this new ring is rotating in the opposite direction of Saturn’s rotation. Item #2: Canadian study shows that women who have breast implants are at higher risk of suicide. Item #3: In a newly published survey, 10% of men who describe themselves as ‘straight’ also reported having sex with a man within the last year.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Cassini probe
Science	Breast implants
Science	Straight men

Host	Result
Steve	win

Rogue	Guess
Perry	Breast implants
Bob	Cassini probe
Jay	Cassini probe
Rebecca	Cassini probe

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

S: Every week I come up with three science news items or facts. Two are genuine and one is fictitious. I then challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. Are you guys ready for the three items this week?

J: Let's do it.

S: Item number one, the Cassini probe to Saturn has discovered a new ring around Saturn. But more significantly, this new ring is rotating in the opposite direction of Saturn's rotation. Item number two, a Canadian study shows that women who have breast implants are at higher risk of suicide. And item number three, in a newly published survey, 10% of men who described themselves as straight also reported having sex with a man within the last year. Perry, why don't you go first?

Perry's Response

P: Well, the last one's clearly true. I won't go into how I know that, but let's just say that it's quite accurate. Probably under-reported. You know, Saturn, the ring's rotating. I guess. I'm no astronomer. And the second one, women with breast implants commit suicide?

S: Right.

P: That's patently ridiculous. So clearly that one's fake.

S: So you think the breast implant being correlated with suicides is fake?

P: Of course. Just think about it for a minute.

S: Okay. Bob, why don't you go next?

Bob's Response

B: Okay. Tell me the third one again, Steve.

S: In a newly published survey, 10% of men who described themselves as straight are also reported having sex with a man within the last year.

B: This is a little high, but I think I'll go with that one. And I think I'll also go with the breast implants. I mean, I could see that. If you have breast augmentation surgery, I could see you've got some maybe some body image issues, and maybe that could translate into some sort of other problems. But the one that caught my attention is the Cassini ring, I think. For various reasons, I think that is false.

S: Okay. Jay?

Jay's Response

J: First off, I'd like to tell Perry, yes, I've thought about breast implants quite often. They're on my mind all the time, actually. But I think the first one's false, the one about the opposite rotating ring on Saturn's ring.

S: Okay. Rebecca?

Rebecca's Response

R: Yeah, I'm going to have to go with the majority. I think that the other two just makes sense. Given a wide definition of the term sex for the one about men, 10% of men, because we've all heard the jokes about well, if you're doing this, I'm not technically gay, you know. So I could see that happening.

Steve Explains Item #3

S: Well, everyone agrees, you all agree, that 10% of men who describe themselves as straight have had sex with a man in the last year, according to a new survey. And that is true, that is science. This was a survey of 4,193 men living in New York City, conducted by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The study, Discordance Between Sexual Behavior and Self-Reported Sexual Identity. A population-based survey of New York City men was published just yesterday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

R: And Steve this kind of relates back to our little tiff before there was a study about...

S: Survival rates of HIV positive men, yeah.

R: Right, for gay men. And one of my problems with the study is how difficult it is to find out exactly who is gay, even from people who think that they're telling the truth, they might have serious differences in what they would describe as gay.

S: No, absolutely. I mean, you can't use just a black and white sort of description in any kind of meaningful epidemiology like this. And most of the studies that I've read, especially more recent ones, use various categories like strictly heterosexual, have had encounters with the same sex.

P: It's a continuum.

S: Yeah, but at least try to break it down into some semi-quantifiable categories. So, which I think, I still think it's possible to do it and get meaningful epidemiological data. You just have to, again, things are fuzzy around the edges.

Steve Explains Item #2

S: Who thought that, no, it was Perry.

P: I was the only one, I believe, on number with the breast implants.

S: That's right. You thought that the breast implants was false. That, however, is science.

J: That makes sense to me.

S: That is true. Basically, this was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology. It's actually a French study, a French-Canadian study. This surveyed 7,200.

P: Strippers?

S: This surveyed 17,400 women total, 7,200 of which had breast implants. And there definitely was a significantly higher risk of suicide among women who had a breast implant.

B: Significant, huh?

S: Significant, yeah.

P: I mean, it makes sense. In all seriousness, it makes sense. I mean if you're going to do that to your body just so you look better, you're not you're not happy.

S: That's basically the conclusion, that within this group are women who got the breast implant because they had a low self-esteem, or maybe they were depressed, or they thought it was going to fix something about their life and it didn't. The caution that came out of this was to plastic surgeons, that you really need to psychologically screen your patients and make sure that their motivations are healthy and not misguided, that they're not just looking for an easy way maybe to fix a more deep or complex psychological problem. Interestingly, in the study, the overall mortality was not different between the two groups. Women with breast implants had a lower mortality from all other reasons, other than suicide, and it balanced out the increased deaths from suicide.

B: Interesting.

R: That's kind of weird.

S: They had, it may seem kind of weird.

P: Well, because they're more interested in their bodies, so they don't smoke and they're slender.

S: That's kind of, but probably the biggest impact was that they are, come from a higher socioeconomic status.

B: Ah, yeah.

S: Which has a huge impact on overall health.

Steve Explains Item #1

S: Which means that the number one, that there is the Cassini probe to Saturn found a new ring that is rotating in the wrong direction.

B: You twisted a real story.

S: It is a real story.

B: Yeah, nice try.

S: The Cassini probe did find a new ring around Saturn, but it's moving in the regular boring direction, as all the other ones. It would be quite a find. I was thinking when I was coming up with this that, what would, would that even be possible? What I thought, the only thing I could think of is, if there was, if Saturn had a captured moon that was retrograde, that was going in the opposite direction, and it fell into the gravitational well of Saturn, it got too close basically and broke apart because of tidal forces and turned into a ring, it could be a ring going the wrong way, but then the chances are it wouldn't be in the plane of the other rings, because a captured satellite would have any old orientation. It wouldn't be in the solar system. So it could be, it would be a skew as well as perhaps 50-50 going the wrong way.

Skeptical Puzzle (1:14:24)

Last week's Puzzle:

You meet a woman and ask her if she has any children. She replies, "two." You ask if she has any sons and she says, "yes." So now you know she has exactly two children and at least one of them is a boy. What is the probability that her other child is also a boy, and therefore that she has two sons?

Answer: 1/3 (or maybe 1/2 - see the forums for a lively discussion on this puzzle)

New Puzzle:

To use a marine lock, like those of the Panama Canal, a boat enters the lock and the gates are closed. Water is then allowed to flow into (or out of) the lock to raise (or lower) the boat to a new level. Consider two different boats cycling through the lock: a cruise ship which barely fits into the lock and a kayak. Which requires more water to flow into or out of the lock to cycle the vessel to the new level?

Alden Johnson Port Ludlow, Washington

S: Let's go on to our skeptical puzzle. Now this is a puzzle that I pulled from the, our message board. I encourage our listeners to check out our message boards, our forums. It's very lively. We have lots of very interesting debates that are going on there. There has been an incredibly lively debate. In fact, I think even a little bit more than the Monty Hall question on this question. So here it is from last week. You meet a woman and ask her if she has any children. She replies, two. You ask if she has any sons and she says, yes. So now you know she has exactly two children and at least one of them is a boy. What is the probability that her other child is also a boy and therefore that she has two sons? There are basically two answers to this puzzle or two, two answers that people have responded with. Some people think that the answer should be one half and others think that the answer should be one third. The reasoning behind the one half answer is that the sex of the one child does not affect the sex of the other. They're independent variables and therefore it's 50-50 regardless of what the sex of the first child is. For those who say the answer is one third say that that's looking at it the wrong way. You have to consider all of the, the families out there that have two children and then the subset of those that have at least one boy. Which means all of the, it will be comprised of families where there's a boy and a girl. The first child was a boy. The second was a girl. The first child was a girl. The second was a boy. And where both were boys. And therefore there's three different possibilities. Only one of which includes that both child, the second child being a boy. Therefore the probability is one third. As it turns out, the question is ambiguous. Because you can actually logically construct it in more than one way that produces either answer. We have a similar puzzle for this week. This one was sent to me by listener Alden Johnson from Port Ludlow, Washington. And Alden sends in this puzzle. To use a marine lock like those of the Panama Canal, a boat enters the lock and the gates are closed. Water is then allowed to flow into or out of the lock to raise or lower the boat to a new level. Consider two different boats cycling through the lock. A cruise ship which barely fits into the lock, and a kayak. Which requires more water to flow into or out of the lock to cycle the vessel to a new level? That's the question. And we'll have the answer to that next week.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:17:04)

Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work.

S: Well, that is our show for this week. Last week we ended the show with a skeptical quote provided by Bob. And we're going to continue that tradition. Bob, you sent us a quote from James Randi, which is appropriate to commemorate the beginning of his weekly commentary on the Skeptics Guide.

B: This is Randi's definition of science, which I think is a very good one. "Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe. Obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic and it doesn't work."

P: Amen.

S: Very well said. Well, everyone, thanks again for joining me.

J: Thank you, Steve. Always a pleasure.

R: Thank you Steve.

B: Good episode.

R: Good times.

S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by the New England Skeptical Society in association with the James Randi Educational Foundation. For more information on this and other episodes, please visit our website at www.theskepticsguide.org. Please send us your questions, suggestions, and other feedback; you can use the "Contact Us" page on our website, or you can send us an email to info@theskepticsguide.org'. 'Theorem' is produced by Kineto and is used with permission.

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