SGU Episode 271

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Introduction

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, September 22nd 2010, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella

B: Hey everybody

S: Rebecca Watson

R: Hello everyone

S: Jay Novella

J: Hey guys

S: And Evan Bernstein

E: Happy equinox!

J: Sure

R: Is it?

E: That would be the Autumnal equinox

S: Autumnal. Do not try to stand eggs on their ends though on this one

R: No, this is the one you can stand chickens on their heads, I think

(laughter)

S: Right

E: I can't stand chickens

B: Now wait, Autumnal equinox, does that mean the- that means the sun is over the tropic of Capricorn? Or Cancer?

E: The equator

S: That's right

E: The solstices are the tropics

B: Ah

J: Ok

S: It means we're entering the bottom half of the analemma, that's what it means

B: Yeah

R: The what?

B: The figure eight the sun makes in the sky throughout the year. Remember that, Steve?

S: Yep

E: That's cool

News Items

Losing Your Religion (1:02)

Neurologica: The Long Awaited CDC Trial on Thimerosal and Autism
Penn State university news: Losing your religion deemed unhealthy

S: Rebecca, can you tell us about this crappy study looking at health and religion?

R: I would love to, Steve. Yes, sociologists at Penn State have published a study that suggests people who leave strict religious groups are unhealthier than members who stay in those groups. Now, it's self-reported data the researchers pulled from a survey that's been conducted annually, or biannually, since 1972, and encompasses more than 30,000 total cases. 40% of members of strict religious groups apparently reported that they were in excellent health, and this was compared to 25% of those who switched religions who said they were in excellent health, and 20% of those who left religion entirely who said they were in excellent health. The researchers came up with some ideas as to why they think this happened. I'm a little skeptical of some of their guesses

E: Very good, very good

R: Mildly. One of the first things mentioned in the press release was that strict groups often discourage unhealthy behaviors, like alcohol and tobacco use. But, of course, we have another study that shows that moderate alcohol use is healthier than abstaining, and also these groups don't necessarily restrict things like bad food, and things like that. And there are plenty of other things that could make you unhealthier in those groups.

S: Yeah, but remember, this was just people's perceptions about their health, not really any direct measure of their health. So even if it is healthy to drink moderate amounts of alcohol, if people think it's unhealthy, they may report their health as being worse. Right, this is all about what people think about their own health.

R: Yeah, the mere fact that this is self-reported data puts everything kind of into question, I think. Especially when- that's not to say that self-reported data is useless, but when we're talking about health, and we're making broad conclusions about the health of people who leave religious groups, I mean, shouldn't we at least have actual, verifiable, evidence of what their health is like? And yeah, we don't have that here, we just have peoples diagnosing themselves.

S: Yeah, "Do you feel healthy?". That's basically…

R: Right

S: … the information we have

R: The researchers go on to also suggest that maybe these groups provide more hope and positive thinking. Which again, I think is BS. I think that it can vary greatly depending on what religion we're talking about, what members we're talking about, there are certain members of these strict religious groups that, you know- I mean positive thinking doesn't really work very well if you're, for instance, in a fundamentalist Mormon sect, and you happen to be a 13 year old girl. That can be kind of a downer. But of course, these aren't the people that are being surveyed, I'm sure. So I find that a bit troublesome, but when they're talking bout that point, they expand on it a bit by saying that when you leave a group, you can lose friends and social support, and that, I think, makes sense. When people leave groups, like thinking of the Amish, or Mormons, or Scientologists, these groups actively force you to cut all ties with your loved ones, your friends and your family, so that it means you're left destitute, possibly, especially if you were a woman who was married to someone who provided all your income, you're left with nothing, and on your own. So that can have a serious effect on your health. But all that says to me really, is that we need to focus on improving resources for people who leave cults and other strict religious groups, helping people in the de-conversion process, and offering them a network and a safety net. That's the only thing that I took from this study that was any worth at all, and even that was tenuous.

S: Yeah, there are a number of ways to look at this study. I think this is one of the studies where scientists are looking where the light is good, not necessarily that this is a great study design, but you have this data sitting there - it's tempting to comb through it, pull out correlations and publish it, right? It's kind of a quick and easy publication. So I think that's what they're doing. And then they're running the entire gamut of possible cause and effect relationships to explain this correlation they found. They also said that it's possible that people who become unhealthy can't keep up with the social demands of the religion, and then fall out of it for that reason.

R: Right

S: So they're basically throwing everything out there, yeah

R: And people who fall out because of poor health, they said, because they're not able to go to the meetings and participate anymore

S: Yeah

R: Or they just get angry that all the praying isn't working

S: Yeah, right. There's so many confounding studies in a study like this, it's hard to say anything. And I think the researchers know that, but again, the data was there, so that's why they pulled it. And also, statistically I'm a little bit dubious of the fact they found a statistically significant effect only for the strictest groups. Does that mean they looked at other religious groups and the effect was not statistically significant? And did they account for multiple comparisons? I'm not sure about that

R: Yeah, and to be clear, you know, we're not talking about- they're not talking about just atheists in general, they're not saying atheists are unhealthy, they're talking about these people who leave these fundamentalist, these strict religious groups, so it doesn't really- I'm a bit afraid of this getting reported in a way that…

S: Yeah

R: You know, that takes it out of context and expands it to include all non-believers, which it simply doesn't address

S: This was actually switchers, not necessarily people who become atheists, this is people who could switch to a different religion.

R: Right, they split it up between those two. They did say that there was a statistically significant difference between switchers and people who left religion entirely, that being a 5% difference. Well, 25% saying they were in excellent health, who switched religion, and 20% who left religion entirely. They said that was statistically significant, but it is slight, when you're looking at the huge difference between members who remained in the group, and those who left.

S: I did look at just what else has been published on this question, and it seems to me, just looking at 20 or so studies in PubMed, that there does seem to be a consistency in the published studies that having a social network has health advantages, and losing your social network is a bad thing. But when you separate that variable out from religiosity, that the religiosity itself doesn't seem to have a health benefit, it's just having the social network that goes along with being religious, that's the thing

R: Right, and that's basically what I said

B: That's what it all boils down to

R: Yeah, is that we need to provide- if anything we could take from this, it's that we need to provide a better social network, a better support network for people who leave

B: FACEBOOK!

(laughter)

R: There's always Facebook, it's true

S: Right

The Man Who Fell to Earth (8:45)

MSNBC: Witnesses: Person falls from sky, then vanishes

S: Evan, did you ever see the movie 'The Man Who Fell to Earth'?

E: (laughs) With David Bowie, right?

S: David Bowie, yeah

E: Oh boy

R: Why did you just ask Evan? I've seen that

S: 'Cause Evan is gonna tell us about some guy who really did fall to earth

R: Oh

E: Well, maybe, possibly. According to NBC news, the headline reads "Person falls from the sky, and then vanishes". Alright, now we need a little-

J: What?

E: -we need a little theme music for this, I think, that would be appropriate for this story

B: Obviously

E: Yes

(Music: It's Raining Men)

J: Oh my god

B: Oh boy

J: I was so happily in total denial of that song I forgot it, thanks Ev

E: Welcome back (laughs) " Person falls from the sky, then vanishes"

B: Omg

E: Last week-

S: Is there a video?

E: Of the person falling from the sky and vanishing?

S: No

E: No. But there is video of one witness who they interviewed-

S: Oh, they have a witness

E: -who gives her account, her testimonial, of what she saw. And she, on behalf of her co-workers, was interviewed, and therefore several people in this New Jersey township claim they saw a person falling from the sky with no parachute, but frankly, an extensive search by police and authorities turned up no evidence.

S: Right

E: Regardless, the woman was convinced, "100% sure" she says, that a person fell from the sky, was in free-fall, and went down behind the tree-lines into a wooded area, just off in the distance, but upon search, nothing was turned up.

J: Ok, first of all, how could she be 100% that that person didn't have a 'chute? The only thing she could know is that the person didn't open a 'chute

R: (laughs) It's a good point

E: (laughs) That's true

R: Maybe he's made of ice, and when he landed, the ice melted

J: That's right. Or he was-

B: I got it, he was a scuba diver

(laughter)

E: Lost?

R: I saw that on Monk

E: Oh yeah, remember that? That old story? Yeah, so I searched around some more to see if there's any follow-up, if they've found something over the course of the last 5, 6 days since this actually happened, and there has been no follow-up they've not found anything, they've not found a body-

S: Yeah, they couldn't find anything, although sometimes with these stories-

E: Or a box or anything

S: -only the local news carries the follow-up, the national news doesn't carry the follow-up. So if somebody local to this story has some follow-up, let us know, but I couldn't find anything either.

R: Where is it?

E: New Jersey. Steve, when you were searching around for more information on the follow-up to this story, I'm not sure if you typed in google the headline "Person falls from sky then vanishes", I did, and you know what I found? Besides the NBC story, here are the other top hits, er, let's see. A site called ghosttheory.com, in which they said it's very strange-

R: Wait, let me guess what their theory is

E: Alright

R: It was a ghost

(laughter)

R: Am I right?

E: They said "maybe some teleportation accident"

J: Of course

S: Yeah, there you go

R: Yeah

E: Possibly

B: I didn't think of that, wow

S: See, I thought it was a superhero just learning to fly, and they haven't quite figured their powers out yet-

R: Oh wait, no, no, no-

S: -but they managed to kick it in before they hit the ground, right after they got below the tree line

R: I've got it, I've got it, I've got it. It was the girl from Portal, she jumped out, shot a portal in the ground and just popped out somewhere else.

J: Yep, and then

S: There you go

J: She ran out of charges and she couldn't portal out of there, so there it is

E: Mystery solved

B: How about a bird dropping a doll?

R: What, like a Real Doll?

E: That's a big doll

B: Yeah, you know, and you thought it was further away, but it was really closer, and, I don't know, I'm just-

R: Could be, could be

J: It's more plausible than-

S: Are you saying, Bob, that maybe these eye-witnesses are not accurate 100% in the details of what they thought they saw?

E: (laughs)

B: That's exactly what I'm saying

S: That's the story here, is the 100% confidence these witnesses have, if a person fell in the general vicinity of where they thought they fell, there probably would be some physical evidence. And apparently, the reports indicate that the search was pretty thorough, lack of evidence is always hard to hang your hat on that, but still…

E: Right, you think they would've found something, whatever it was. A container that fell from a plane, perhaps-

S: A dummy

B: A big blood spot, something

S: Broken branches

E: Broken branches, exactly. There would've been something to corroborate the story

R: I believe that my ice-cube man theory still holds here

(laughter)

E: Fell and melted away

B: If they saw something, what could it have been? You know, like if we had to say 'Ok, something did fall from the sky, go below the tree-line'. The things that they could have not perceived correctly are speed and distance. Right?

S: And size

E&B: And size

S: All three are independent variables

R: What if it was like a flock of birds, a small flock of birds diving together

S: Yeah

E: Diving down

R: Yeah

B: A very small rock

(laughter)

R: Only inches from her face. Maybe it was a drug drop, they dropped a big duffle bag of money and drugs, or something, and then the-

S: And someone picked it up

R: -drug dealers were waiting there to grab it. And it was the perfect crime except for these two ladies. If these two ladies are killed in the next several weeks, we'll know.

S: It's true that it could be something unusual, just not a person dropping from a plane, right?

E: Yeah, but we like to, you know, when we don't know what's going on, or we're not really sure, we'll put in place something that is extremely familiar, like what else could be falling from the sky? It must have been a skydiver, right?

S: The availability heuristic, we reach for what we know.

Dirty Electricity (14:19)

ScienceBasedMedicine: CFLs, Dirty Electricity and Bad Science

S: Have you guys heard of 'dirty electricity'?

B: Um, no

J: Yeah, I have.

S: Have you?

J: It's the electricity that feeds my porn collection

S: Right

B: Oh god

J: On my external hard drive, no?

S: This is more internet fear mongering about stuff you probably don't have to worry about. There's a couple of issues here. One is just the notion of electromagnetic frequencies, EMF radiation in our environment, for our appliances, our light bulbs, our computer screens. And this issue has been around for a while, and it's cropped up recently in relation, specifically, to compact fluorescent light bulbs. In Canada, specifically, the Canadian government actually has, I think, pretty much banned the sale of incandescent bulbs

B: Really?

S: Yeah

B: They banned them?

S: Yeah, so you have to buy CFLs, or some other energy efficient option. And this is I think also under discussion in the US, doing similar things, phasing out incandescent bulbs, and other countries have done this, and I think this has stoked the flames of the fear mongering regarding CFLs. So there's actually a few issues I came across, I actually wrote about this pretty extensively on Science Based Medicine today, but very quickly, a couple of issues that come up with CFLs. One are that they contain a tiny amount of mercury, between 1.4 and 4mg of mercury in the bulb. However, if you don't break the bulb, there is no mercury exposure. So there's no risk, there's no mercury exposure, if you shatter the bulb, you may in fact get exposed to a tiny amount of mercury. But again, the amount you would get exposed to – even in a worst-case scenario – is much less than you would get exposed to by eating a tuna fish sandwich. So again it's negligible. Some people have raised concerns about mercury in the environment, because you have to dispose- you either have to recycle these, or they have to be disposed of a certain way, and people are just throwing them out and they're winding up in landfills. But interestingly, if you calculate the amount of electricity that's saved by a compact fluorescent light bulb over an incandescent bulb, and you consider how much electricity is being made by coal burning power plants, which does emit a little bit of mercury into the atmosphere. Actually less mercury gets into the environment from a CFL than from the coal you would have to burn for the extra electricity from an incandescent bulb.

J: Really

S: Yeah

E: There you go

S: So, it's a bit of a pain when you have to dispose them. But otherwise, it's not really an issue. There's also a concern that some people claim that CFLs cause headaches, although there's no evidence to document that.

E: Lots of things cause headaches

S: Yeah, everything causes headaches, right? Because headaches are so common. It's like every single drug has headache listed as a side-effect, because it's just part of the background noise in reporting side-effects. But the older fluorescent bulbs used to have a flicker rate of about 60 hertz, 60 cycles per second. And some people could see, perceive, that flicker rate, it could cause eyestrain and headaches. But the newer fluorescent bulbs use a different technology, they're electronically ballasted, versus the older ones, which were magnetically ballasted, and they cycle at 10-40,000Hz-

J: Whoa

S: -which is not perceptible, and does not cause eye-strain or headaches, so there's no flicker with CFLs, basically. But the big claims that are circulating are about this 'dirty electricity' now. Interestingly, almost every source that I saw on this, whether a website that's providing information or news reports, or the video that's circulating on Facebook that prompted about a dozen emails this week, links to, or references, one Canadian researcher, Magda Havas, as the 'expert' who claims that this 'dirty electricity' from CFLs and other sources are causing health problems. Now, from my reading, I think this woman, Magda Havas, she's like the only researcher who's really saying- making the claims that she's making. Her research, at least what she's put forward, and what she's published, is crap. She sounds like a lone crank to me, who's out there on the fringe, but unfortunately, she keeps cropping up as the expert, right?

B: The lone expert

S: The lone expert

E: We need a sound effect for that

B: Please

E: Alright, I'm gonna come up with it. I don't have it tonight-

S: Ok

B: Aw

E: -but next time we use 'lone crank as an expert'

S: One website I was reading said that "Well on one hand, the World Health Organisation reviewed 25,000 articles on non-ionising radiation, and concluded there was no evidence of any health consequences. But on the other hand, we have this expert who says there is a risk, and that's Magda Havas" they say it's this one woman that keeps cropping up. "Therefore, who knows; the experts disagree, so I don't know"

B: Magda or the who. Who is it?

S: Yeah, right, there's one person who's the only person who's sounding the alarms about this, or an expert panel who exhaustively reviewed 25,000 studies over 30 years.

E: (contemplatively) Hmmmm

S: Hmm

E: Hmmm, it's close, it's close

S: (laughs) Yeah. Now, she claims, for example, that 'dirty electricity' causes type three diabetes.

J: Which is what?

B: Three?

S: It doesn't exist! It's her- it doesn't exist, she made it up.

E: Type three!

(laughter)

B: Oh my god

E: That's awesome

S: It increases blood-sugar, and her evidence for this is one study that she published – which is really just a case series of four patients, of four cases. So it's not controlled, it's not blinded, you know, the evidence is comple- it's virtually anecdotal, it's so uncontrolled. And that's it, I mean that's the kind of study- you shouldn't be going to the press talking about type three diabetes based on that kind of flimsy evidence

B: Wow

E: Oh my gosh, making up a disease-

S: That is the most preliminary of preliminary data, that's the kind of thing where you could say 'Alright, this warrants another study', that's about it. And-

B: Right, and it probably doesn't

S: -the plausibility here is vanishingly small, so, you know, she is to EMF health concerns, what Jacques Benveniste was to homeopathy. You know, just one lab, one person out there generating this data, it's not very impressive, but making a lot of noise and getting undue attention for-

B: N-rays!

S: -being the lone person out there

J: Does she have a degree in anything? Or is she-

S: She's a PhD, yeah, she's a PhD. For whatever reason, she's become an advocate. She's a staunch advocate. Remember recently we talked about wifi in the public schools?

B,E&J: Yeah

S: Again, she was the expert pushing the 'wifi is causing all these problems'

J: Oh, Ok, so she's got- her angle is anything electricity-based-

S: Yes, right, exactly

B: (singing?) Electrons are bad

S: And it's just terrible that the media is giving her so much attention, and not putting it into perspective

B: Right, that's the big problem here

S: Right. This is not to promote CFLs, I mean, I think they're fine, they're probably a stop-gap technology

B: They are, LEDs are gonna take over, so it's-

S: I think so

E: LED lights are nice

B: Huh?

S: I think so

E: Nice lights

B: Yeah, it's-

S: But the one technological hurdle for LEDs is that they're unidirectional, instead of omnidirectional

E: Directional

B: I've seen fixes to that, that's a minor issue

S: But I don't know why they're not more available then, is it they just haven't queued up manufacturing yet? Or are people not buying into them for some reason?

B: I don't know, is it the price? Or just the quality of the white light itself that they still haven't really fine-tuned right, I'm not sure

S: Well they don't put out- again, they put out very narrow frequency of light, as opposed to a broad frequency, that's why they use so little energy, right? But the way around that, which is also true for CFLs, is that you coat the surrounding glass with something which then does emit more of a broad spectrum of light

B: Right

S: Right now they're perfect for directional lighting, right? So, at least here, using them in traffic lights, because they last forever, they last a really long time, they don't use a lot of electricity, and traffic light can be pointing in one direction, that's ok. They're great for flashlights

B: They are, they're so bright, you can't even look at 'em

E: Yeah

S: Yeah, great, it's a nice, clean, very diffuse beam, it's really nice.

B: I want a Star Trek light panel

(laughter)

B: Nevermind

S: But you know, I was reading one site, and they said that the main inefficiency of incandescent bulbs is that they waste electricity as heat.

B: Oh yeah

S: But if you- in the winter, if you're heating your home, that actually neutralizes the money saving of using CFLs over incandescent bulbs

B: (laughs loudly)

S: Because the heat of the bulbs is heating your house

B: How awesome is that? The inefficiency of the bulb. (laughs) That's great

Origins of Moons (23:14)

BBC: Massive blast 'created Mars moon'

Halfalogue ()

Assoc. for Psychological Science: ‘Halfalogue’: Overheard Cell-Phone Conversations Are Not Only Annoying but Reduce Our Attention

Interview with Simon Singh ()

www.simonsingh.net

Science or Fiction ()

• Item number 1: 'An engineer recently became the first person to achieve sustained human-powered flight with an ornithopter.'

• Item number 2: 'A new study indicates that commonly used sunless tanning products directly increase the risk of developing basal cell carcinoma.'

• Item number 3: 'Recent satellite images demonstrate Mercury's long gaseous comet-like tail.'

Skeptical Quote of the Week ()

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.

Albert Einstein

S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by the New England Skeptical Society in association with the James Randi Educational Foundation and skepchick.org. For more information on this and other episodes, please visit our website at www.theskepticsguide.org. For questions, suggestions, and other feedback, please use the "Contact Us" form on the website, or send an email to info@theskepticsguide.org. If you enjoyed this episode, then please help us spread the word by voting for us on Digg, or leaving us a review on iTunes. You can find links to these sites and others through our homepage. 'Theorem' is produced by Kineto, and is used with permission.

References